Social Sensitivity and Depression in Peer-Victimized Girls: Insights from Neuroscience

 描述（由申请人提供）：同伴受害是早期逆境的一种突出形式，对青少年的心理健康具有长期成本。事实上，研究和媒体报道将同龄人受害作为一个重要的公共卫生问题列入国家议程，因为这一问题普遍存在，并对青少年和成年人的情感健康产生影响。确定解释这些持久影响的过程对于为政策和实践提供信息至关重要，但科学家 还没有发现受害是如何破坏青少年的发展的，也就是说，受害是如何以灌输长期风险的方式“深入皮肤”的。受日益认识到早期生活压力对成熟的大脑系统和相关的精神病理学的普遍影响的启发，本研究将通过记录青少年受害后遗症，为科学知识及其应用做出重大贡献，并对丰富我们对早期逆境塑造压力反应和心理健康的机制的理解产生更广泛的影响。将发展和社会心理学，社会情感神经科学和发展精神病理学领域的思想与NIMH RDoC框架相结合，本研究将研究受害是否与持续威胁/损失中涉及的负价系统失调有关，从而提高反应性和损害调节，并导致青少年抑郁症。本研究将采用多层次设计，在实验设计（社会威胁/损失的实验室线索）的背景下，在神经和行为水平上研究反应性和调节。本研究将利用现有的样本的青春期女孩（10日至11日年级），以及特点的受害，风险和资源的个体差异，从2日至9年级的心理健康，从而提供了机会，利用一个全面的纵向数据集，以丰富拟议的短期（两年）的神经/行为处理和抑郁症状的调查。因此，这项研究是独特的定位，以检查儿童受害和随后的神经和行为处理的社会线索之间的联系，以及确定是否压力反应/调节占受害青少年抑郁症的贡献。这项研究还将提供有关风险和弹性过程中个体差异的新数据，从而最大限度地提高预防/干预计划的效率。最终，预计这项研究将成为更大规模纵向研究的基础，调查：（a）各种背景下的早期逆境如何影响新兴的大脑系统，从而为青少年心理健康问题奠定基础;（b）可能缓冲青少年免受这些不良后果的个人和背景资源。B。这一系列的研究可以产生明确和令人信服的影响，政策和实践指导方针，旨在尽量减少早期社会逆境对青年的健康和发展构成的威胁，对长期适应和社会负担的潜在影响。

 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Peer victimization is a salient form of early adversity with long-term costs for youths' mental health. Indeed, research and media coverage place peer victimization on the national agenda as a critical public health issue, given its prevalence and it implications for emotional well-being into adolescence and adulthood. Identifying processes accounting for these enduring effects is critical for informing policy and practice, yet scientists have not yet discovered the processes through which victimization derails youths' development-that is, how victimization "gets under the skin" in ways that instill long-term risk. Inspired by a growing recognition of the pervasive impact of early life stress on maturing brain systems and associated psychopathology, this research will contribute substantially to scientific knowledge and its application by documenting the adolescent sequelae of victimization, with broader implications for enriching our understanding of the mechanisms through which early adversity shapes stress reactivity and mental health. Integrating ideas across the fields of developmental and social psychology, social affective neuroscience, and developmental psychopathology with the NIMH RDoC framework, this research will examine whether victimization is linked to dysregulated negative valence systems involved in sustained threat/loss, thereby heightening reactivity and compromising regulation and contributing to adolescent depression. Introducing an innovative methodological approach into the field of peer victimization, this research will use a multi-level design, examining reactivity and regulation at both the neural and behavioral levels in the context of an experimental design (laboratory cues of social threat/loss). This study will take advantage of an existing sample of adolescent girls (10th-11th graders), well-characterized on victimization, individual differences in risks and resources, and mental health from 2nd-9th grade, thereby providing the opportunity to leverage a comprehensive longitudinal data set to enrich the proposed short-term (two-year) investigation of neural/behavioral processing and depressive symptoms. Thus, this study is uniquely positioned to examine the link between childhood victimization and subsequent neural and behavioral processing of social cues as well as to determine whether stress reactivity/regulation account for the contribution of victimization to adolescent depression. This research also will provide novel data on individual differences in risk and resilience processes, thereby maximizing the efficiency of prevention/intervention programs. Ultimately, it is anticipated that this researc will serve as a basis for larger longitudinal studies investigating: (a) how early adversity withina variety of contexts influences emerging brain systems in ways that set the stage for adolescent mental health problems; and (b) individual and contextual resources that may buffer youth against these adverse consequences. This line of research can yield clear and compelling implications for policy and practice guidelines aimed at minimizing the threat posed by early social adversity to youths' health and development, with potential implications for long-term adaptation and societal burden.