Youth Resilience Unit, Centre for Psychiatry and Mental Health, Wolfson Institute of Population Health, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK.
Taghyeer, Amman, Jordan.
Res Child Adolesc Psychopathol. 2024 Aug;52(8):1233-1246. doi: 10.1007/s10802-024-01182-0. Epub 2024 Mar 2.
Refugee children's development may be affected by their parents' war-related trauma exposure and psychopathology symptoms across a range of cognitive and affective domains, but the processes involved in this transmission are poorly understood. Here, we investigated the impact of refugee mothers' trauma exposure and mental health on their children's mental health and attention biases to emotional expressions. In our sample of 324 Syrian refugee mother-child dyads living in Jordan (children's M=6.32, SD = 1.18; 50% female), mothers reported on their symptoms of anxiety and depression, and on their children's internalising, externalising, and attention problems. A subset of mothers reported their trauma exposure (n = 133) and PTSD symptoms (n = 124). We examined emotion processing in the dyads using a standard dot-probe task measuring their attention allocation to facial expressions of anger and sadness. Maternal trauma and PTSD symptoms were linked to child internalising and attention problems, while maternal anxiety and depression symptoms were associated with child internalising, externalising, and attention problems. Mothers and children were hypervigilant towards expressions of anger, but surprisingly, mother and child biases were not correlated with each other. The attentional biases to emotional faces were also not linked to psychopathology risk in the dyads. Our findings highlight the importance of refugee mothers' trauma exposure and psychopathology on their children's wellbeing. The results also suggest a dissociation between the mechanisms underlying mental health and those involved in attention to emotional faces, and that intergenerational transmission of mental health problems might involve mechanisms other than attentional processes relating to emotional expressions.
难民儿童的发展可能会受到父母与战争相关的创伤暴露和精神病理学症状的影响，这些症状涉及认知和情感等多个领域，但目前人们对这种传递过程的理解还很有限。在这里，我们研究了难民母亲的创伤暴露和心理健康对其子女心理健康和情绪表达注意偏向的影响。在我们的研究样本中，有 324 对来自叙利亚的难民母子（儿童的平均年龄为 6.32 岁，标准差为 1.18 岁；50%为女性）居住在约旦。母亲报告了她们的焦虑和抑郁症状，以及孩子的内化、外化和注意力问题。在母亲报告的创伤暴露（n=133）和 PTSD 症状（n=124）中，有一部分人报告了她们的创伤暴露和 PTSD 症状。我们使用标准的点探测任务来检测情绪处理，该任务测量了他们对愤怒和悲伤面部表情的注意力分配。母亲的创伤和 PTSD 症状与孩子的内化和注意力问题有关，而母亲的焦虑和抑郁症状与孩子的内化、外化和注意力问题有关。母亲和孩子对愤怒的表情都高度警觉，但令人惊讶的是，母亲和孩子的偏见彼此之间没有相关性。情绪面孔的注意偏向也与亲子对精神病理学风险没有关联。我们的研究结果强调了难民母亲的创伤暴露和精神病理学对其子女福祉的重要性。研究结果还表明，心理健康的潜在机制与情绪面孔注意之间存在分离，而心理健康问题的代际传递可能涉及与情绪表达相关的注意力过程以外的机制。
