ObjectiveThis study examines how work-family-care disruptions during the COVID-19 pandemic clustered and co-occurred for working parents and explores the impact on employee well-being.MethodWe investigated profiles of parents' work-family-care disruption using latent class analysis; explored parent, work, family, and household patterning of classes; and examined associations with concurrent and subsequent employee well-being (occupational fatigue, time pressure, psychological distress).ResultsParents were classed as "low" (35.6%), "moderate" (58.1%), and "high" (6.3%) impact. Distinct parent, work, family, and household characteristics were associated with these classes. Parents moderately or highly impacted reported lower employee well-being concurrently and at 6-month follow-up.ConclusionsFindings highlight the impact of work-family-care disruption on employee well-being. Additional supports to working parents are needed in times of crisis, particularly for vulnerable parents and for working parents who experience increases in unpaid labor.

Evidence based programs that focus on how parents respond to their children's emotions, such as Tuning in to Kids (R) (TIK), can be delivered in a number of ways, including in the group setting. However, attending a group does not suit all parents. The current study used a partially randomized controlled design to compare group versus one-to-one delivery of TIK with parents of 4-10-year-old children with challenging behaviors. TIK supports parents to improve their emotion awareness and regulation, and to respond to children using emotion coaching. Parents (n = 229) were randomly allocated to group TIK (n = 76), one-to-one TIK (n = 80), or a 9month wait-list control (n = 73) with questionnaires for parents and teachers. Results showed both methods of delivery were effective. One-to-one was superior in improving parent emotion dismissing and parent stress as well as child behavior, however, participation in both interventions resulted in clinically significant reductions in child behavior problem intensity. Trial Registration: Australian and New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry No. ACTRN12618000310268.

Background: Teachers vary in how they socialize emotions in day-to-day teaching, including during delivery of social emotional learning content. Teachers' difficulties in managing their own emotions can impact negatively on teaching, teacher wellbeing, teacher-student relationships, as well as teachers' capacity to be supportive with adolescents. Improving emotion socialization skills in teachers has shown benefits for primary teachers, students and the broader school community, however, there have been limited evaluations of intervention programs that aim to improve teacher emotion socialization in the secondary school setting, a critical time for students' emotion regulation development. Aim: This group randomized controlled study examined outcomes, feasibility and acceptability of the Tuning in to Students program (TIS), a variant of the evidence-based Tuning in to Teens (R) parenting program, designed to enhance teacher emotional competence and supportive responses to students' emotions. Method: Four secondary schools (matched pairs) were randomized to intervention or 12-month waitlist-control conditions. Teachers (N = 117; 68 intervention) self-reported on program acceptability post-intervention, and on wellbeing, emotional competence, and emotion socialization responses pre-intervention and 12-months later. Results: Participating teachers reported high acceptability and greater improvements in teacher emotional competence and reductions in emotion dismissing responses, when compared with control teachers who reported no change at 12-month follow-up. Conclusions: These findings provide initial support for TIS as an acceptable teacher intervention for improving teacher emotion socialization, supporting its use as part of a whole school multisystemic intervention of Tuning in to Teens.

OBJECTIVE:This study examines how work-family-care disruptions during the COVID-19 pandemic clustered and co-occurred for working parents and explores the impact on employee well-being. METHOD:We investigated profiles of parents' work-family-care disruption using latent class analysis; explored parent, work, family, and household patterning of classes; and examined associations with concurrent and subsequent employee well-being (occupational fatigue, time pressure, psychological distress). RESULTS:Parents were classed as "low" (35.6%), "moderate" (58.1%), and "high" (6.3%) impact. Distinct parent, work, family, and household characteristics were associated with these classes. Parents moderately or highly impacted reported lower employee well-being concurrently and at 6-month follow-up. CONCLUSIONS:Findings highlight the impact of work-family-care disruption on employee well-being. Additional supports to working parents are needed in times of crisis, particularly for vulnerable parents and for working parents who experience increases in unpaid labor.

This study examined long-term mediating effects of the smalltalk parenting intervention on children's effortful control at school age (7.5 years; 2016-2018). In 2010-2012, parents (96% female) of toddlers (N = 1201; aged 12-36 months; 52% female) were randomly assigned to either: standard playgroup, smalltalk playgroup (group-only), or smalltalk playgroup with additional home coaching (smalltalk plus). Multi-informant data indicated that smalltalk plus had unique indirect effects on children's effortful control, through parents' capacity to 'maintain and extend' children's focus during joint interactions. Possible mediating pathways via parent verbal responsivity, home learning activities, and descriptive language use were not supported. When parents received a structured playgroup program with additional home coaching, sustainable benefits were evident in children's self-regulation, assessed in the early school years.

Abstract The transition to parenthood represents one of the greatest potential stressors that the romantic couple relationship will experience. This chapter examines the role of individual vulnerability factors, environmental stressors, individual psychological responses, and couple relationship functioning in negatively impacting the maintenance and quality of the couple bond within the context of parenthood. We propose and then structure a summary of the current research evidence around a conceptual model of relationship maintenance that integrates an evolutionary psychology perspective—namely, attachment theory—to complement other relationship science and developmental perspectives. We show that individual differences in adult attachment are associated with relationship functioning (i.e., levels of support and conflict between partners), which, in turn, predict relationship outcomes related to the maintenance of romantic relationships (i.e., couple relationship quality and dissolution), and that the environmental stressors in and around parenthood can exacerbate these associations. Specifically, we highlight research showing that attachment insecurity (i.e., higher levels of attachment anxiety and avoidance) is associated with poorer relationship functioning and outcomes.

Parental reflective functioning refers to parents' capacity to consider their child's internal experiences and is associated with secure parent-child attachment, sensitive parenting behavior, and positive child socioemotional development. However, research into determinants of parental reflective functioning in large diverse samples has been scarce. Therefore, using a large multinational sample and longitudinal design, we aimed to: (a) identify sociodemographic determinants of parental reflective functioning; (b) investigate whether parental emotion regulation is a psychological determinant of parental reflective functioning; and (c) assess whether child negative affect, parent stress, and child age moderate longitudinal associations between parent emotion regulation and parental reflective functioning. Data were two time points of the Child and Parent Emotion Study following 2,208 parents (68% female) of a child aged 0-10 years residing in English-speaking countries. Parent emotion dysregulation, parent male cisgender status, speaking a language other than English, younger parent age, and older child age were associated with lower parental reflective functioning 12 months later, as indicated by higher levels of prementalizing. Child negative affect moderated the association between parent emotion dysregulation and parental reflective functioning, whereas child age and parent stress did not. Specifically, parent difficulty controlling impulses when distressed was associated with higher levels of prementalizing modes of reflective functioning only when child negative affect was moderate-to-high. The interplay between parent emotion dysregulation and child negative affect highlights the importance of considering both parent and child characteristics in intervention planning and suggests that personalizing parenting support according to these characteristics may be beneficial. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Neighbourhood-level factors can exert unique influence on children's development, independent of individual parent, child, and family factors. We investigated the contribution of neighbourhood socioeconomic status (using government-generated definitions) to directly-observed parent-child interactions among 596 Australian parents and their 7-8-year-old children. Parents' sensitive responding and parent-child positive mutuality were rated according to the SCARP:7-8 Years (Short Coding of Attachment-Related Parenting). Adjusting for individual family characteristics, multilevel modelling revealed evidence of an association between neighbourhood socioeconomic status and sensitive responding (beta=.10, p=.004) but not for parent-child positive mutuality (beta=-.01, p=.90). Tailored, evidence-based parenting supports according to local community need are warranted.

One prior study suggests that traumatic events before Lyme disease play an important role in symptom severity. We examined this hypothesis among 60 individuals with persistent symptoms after Lyme disease using validated measures of trauma history, mental and physical symptoms, and functional status. Analysis of variance with Tukey-Kramer multiple comparisons test revealed that a greater number of traumatic events were significantly associated with greater symptom severity on the scales of mood (stress, depression, and anxiety), cognition, multisystem symptom burden, and functional status (mental and physical), but not on measures of pain and fatigue. The effect sizes-meaningful but not large (0.17-0.29)-were mostly produced by comparison with individuals reporting multiple prior traumatic events, representing half of the posttreatment Lyme disease syndrome (PTLDS) group. In conclusion, although PTLDS may be exacerbated by past trauma, trauma plays a role in only a subgroup of PTLDS. Whether addressing prior trauma can improve outcomes in this subgroup requires study.

This study examined the adherence to and the potential benefit of Kundalini yoga (KY) for post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome (PTLDS). Participants were randomly assigned to 8 weeks of a KY small-group intervention or a waitlist control (WLC). Adherence was measured as attendance at KY group sessions. Primary outcomes assessed pain, pain interference, fatigue, and global health. Secondary outcomes assessed multisystem symptom burden, mood, sleep, physical and social functioning, cognition, and mindfulness. Linear mixed models were used to test changes in outcomes over time as a function of group assignment; intercepts for participants were modeled as random effects. Although the target sample size was 40 participants, the study concluded with 29 participants due to recruitment challenges. No KY participants dropped out of the study, and participants attended 75% of group sessions on average, but WLC retention was poor (57%). Regarding primary outcomes, there was no significant interaction between group and time. Regarding secondary outcomes, there was a significant interaction between group and time for multisystem symptom burden (p < 0.05) and cognition (p < 0.01); KY participants reported improved multisystem symptom burden and cognition over the course of the study compared to WLC participants. To enhance recruitment and retention, future trials may consider expanding geographic access and including supportive procedures for WLC participants. This preliminary study supports the need for a larger study to determine if KY reduces multisystem symptom burden and enhances cognition among people with PTLDS.

The COVID-19 pandemic presents significant risks to population mental health. Despite evidence of detrimental effects for adults, there has been limited examination of the impact of COVID-19 on parents and children specifically. We aim to examine patterns of parent and child (0-18 years) mental health, parent substance use, couple conflict, parenting practices, and family functioning during COVID-19, compared to pre-pandemic data, and to identify families most at risk of poor outcomes according to pre-existing demographic and individual factors, and COVID-19 stressors. Participants were Australian mothers (81%) and fathers aged 18 years and over who were parents of a child 0-18 years (N = 2365). Parents completed an online self-report survey during 'stage three' COVID-19 restrictions in April 2020. Data were compared to pre-pandemic data from four Australian population-based cohorts. Compared to pre-pandemic estimates, during the pandemic period parents reported higher rates of parent depression, anxiety, and stress (Cohen's d = 0.26-0.81, all p < 0.001), higher parenting irritability (d = 0.17-0.46, all p < 0.001), lower family positive expressiveness (d = - 0.18, p < 0.001), and higher alcohol consumption (22% vs 12% drinking four or more days per week, p < 0.001). In multivariable analyses, we consistently found that younger parent age, increased financial deprivation, pre-existing parent and child physical and mental health conditions, COVID-19 psychological and environmental stressors, and housing dissatisfaction were associated with worse parent and child functioning and more strained family relationships. Our data suggest wide-ranging, detrimental family impacts associated with the COVID-19 pandemic; and support policy actions to assist families with financial supports, leave entitlements, and social housing.

Introduction: Parents shape child emotional competence and mental health via their beliefs about children’s emotions, emotion-related parenting, the emotional climate of the family, and by modelling emotion regulation skills. However, research evidence to-date has been based on small samples with mothers of primary school-aged children. Further research is needed to elucidate the direction and timing of associations for mothers and fathers/partners across different stages of child development. The Child and Parent Emotion Study (CAPES) aims to examine longitudinal associations between parent emotion socialisation, child emotion regulation, and socio-emotional adjustment at four time-points from pregnancy to age 12. CAPES will investigate the moderating role of parent gender, child temperament and gender, and family background. Methods and analysis: CAPES recruited 2,063 current parents from six English-speaking countries of a child 0-9 years and 273 prospective parents (i.e., women/their partners pregnant with their first child) in 2018-2019. Participants will complete a 20-30 minute online survey at four time-points 12 months apart, to be completed in December 2022. Measures include validated parent-report tools assessing parent emotion socialisation (i.e., parent beliefs, the family emotional climate, supportive parenting, and parent emotion regulation) and age-sensitive measures of child outcomes (i.e., emotion regulation and socio-emotional adjustment). Analyses will use mixed effects regression to simultaneously assess associations over three time-point transitions (i.e., T1 to T2; T2 to T3; T3 to T4), with exposure variables lagged to estimate how past factors predict outcomes 12 months later. Ethics and dissemination: Ethics approval was granted by the Deakin University Human Research Ethics Committee and the Deakin University Faculty of Health Human Research Ethics Committee. We will disseminate results through conferences and open access publications. We will invite parent end-users to co-develop our dissemination strategy, and discuss the interpretation of key findings prior to publication.

The COVID-19 pandemic presents significant risks to the mental health and wellbeing of families. This study aimed to examine: (1) patterns of parent and child (0–18 years) mental health, parent substance use, couple conflict, parenting practices, and family functioning during COVID-19 compared to pre-pandemic data; and (2) associations between parent, child, and family outcomes during the pandemic and both pre-existing risk factors and COVID-19 stressors. Participants were Australian mothers (81%) and fathers aged 18 years and over who were parents of a child 0–18 years (N=2,365). Parents completed an online self-report survey assessing mental health, substance use, couple conflict, parenting, and family functioning during ‘stage three’ COVID-19 restrictions in April 2020. Data were compared to pre-pandemic data from four Australian population-based cohorts. Compared to pre-pandemic estimates, during the pandemic period parents reported higher rates of parent mental health symptoms (Cohen’s d=0.26-.81, all p&lt;.001), higher parenting irritability (d=0.17-.46, all p&lt;.001), lower family positive expressiveness (d=-0.18, p&lt;.001), and higher alcohol consumption (22% vs 12% drinking four or more days per week, p&lt;.001). In multivariable analyses, pre-existing financial deprivation and COVID-19 stressors were associated with greater severity in parent and child mental health symptoms, parent emotion dysregulation, parenting irritability, couple conflict and family positive/negative expressiveness. Parents and children with pre-existing mental health conditions had elevated difficulties during the pandemic across most domains. Our data suggest wide-ranging, detrimental family impacts associated with the COVID-19 pandemic; and support policy actions to assist families with financial supports, leave entitlements, and social housing.

Tablet-adapted measures provide an efficient, accurate method of data collection for large-scale studies. The Castles and Coltheart Reading Test 2 (CC2) is a standardized paper-and-pencil measure of children's reading ability. In the current study, the CC2 was administered to 603 children aged 7-8 years via iPad using electronic data capture software. Results indicate the tablet-adapted measure could be reliably administered by non-clinical staff and showed quantitative equivalence, i.e., comparable score distributions, to CC2 normative data. Internal consistency was good for regular and non-word lists. Findings suggest that the tablet-adapted CC2 is a viable tool for large research studies.

Eighty-two patients seeking consultation for long-term sequalae after suspected tick-borne illness were consecutively tested for Borrelia miyamotoi antibodies using a recombinant glycerophosphodiester phosphodiesterase (GlpQ) enzyme immunoassay. Twenty-one of the 82 patients (26%) tested positive on the GlpQ IgG ELISA. Nearly all of the patients (98%) had no prior B. miyamotoi testing, indicating that clinicians rarely test for this emerging tick-borne pathogen. Compared to patients who solely tested positive for Lyme disease antibodies, patients with B. miyamotoi antibodies presented with significantly more sleepiness and pain. A prospective study is needed to ascertain the relationship between the presence of B. miyamotoi antibodies and persistent symptoms.

Participant attrition is a significant challenge for longitudinal studies, particularly those involving disadvantaged populations. We attempted to re-engage n = 990 families in a five-year follow-up of a randomised controlled trial of an early childhood parenting intervention. Tracing was attempted for n = 90/990 (9.1%) uncontactable participants. Evidence for the identification of a matching Facebook profile was classified as strong, moderate or weak. A private message was sent to those with strong evidence (n = 63/90, 70.0%), of which 32 responded, 22 agreed to participate and 19 provided data. Compared to participants engaged using traditional methods, those re-engaged through Facebook were more likely at initial recruitment to have a younger child (p =.02), to be a single parent (p =.04), less educated (p <.001), lower income (p =.01) and in an unemployed household (p <.001). Findings suggest that social media can be an effective engagement tool, helping to minimise overall and selective attrition in longitudinal studies, particularly for hard-to-reach populations.

Introduction Parents shape child emotional competence and mental health via their beliefs about children’s emotions, emotion-related parenting, the emotional climate of the family and by modelling emotion regulation skills. However, much of the research evidence to date has been based on small samples with mothers of primary school-aged children. Further research is needed to elucidate the direction and timing of associations for mothers and fathers/partners across different stages of child development. The Child and Parent Emotion Study (CAPES) aims to examine longitudinal associations between parent emotion socialisation, child emotion regulation and socioemotional adjustment at four time points from pregnancy to age 12 years. CAPES will investigate the moderating role of parent gender, child temperament and gender, and family background. Methods and analysis CAPES recruited 2063 current parents from six English-speaking countries of a child 0–9 years and 273 prospective parents (ie, women/their partners pregnant with their first child) in 2018–2019. Participants will complete a 20–30 min online survey at four time points 12 months apart, to be completed in December 2022. Measures include validated parent-report tools assessing parent emotion socialisation (ie, parent beliefs, the family emotional climate, supportive parenting and parent emotion regulation) and age-sensitive measures of child outcomes (ie, emotion regulation and socioemotional adjustment). Analyses will use mixed-effects regression to simultaneously assess associations over three time-point transitions (ie, T1 to T2; T2 to T3; T3 to T4), with exposure variables lagged to estimate how past factors predict outcomes 12 months later. Ethics and dissemination Ethics approval was granted by the Deakin University Human Research Ethics Committee and the Deakin University Faculty of Health Human Research Ethics Committee. We will disseminate results through conferences and open access publications. We will invite parent end users to co-develop our dissemination strategy, and discuss the interpretation of key findings prior to publication. Trial registeration Protocol pre-registration: DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/NGWUY.

Introduction: The multi-system symptoms accompanying acute and post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome pose a challenge for time-limited assessment. The General Symptom Questionnaire (GSQ-30) was developed to fill the need for a brief patient-reported measure of multi-system symptom burden. In this study we assess the psychometric properties and sensitivity to change of the GSQ-30. Materials and Methods: 342 adult participants comprised 4 diagnostic groups: Lyme disease (post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome, n = 124; erythema migrans, n = 94); depression, n = 36; traumatic brain injury, n = 51; healthy, n = 37. Participants were recruited from clinical research facilities in Massachusetts, Maryland, and New York. Validation measures for the GSQ-30 included the Patient Health Questionnaire-4 for depression and anxiety, visual analog scales for fatigue and pain, the Sheehan Disability Scale for functional impairment, and one global health question. To assess sensitivity to change, 53 patients with erythema migrans completed the GSQ-30 before treatment and 6 months after 3 weeks of treatment with doxycycline. Results: The GSQ-30 demonstrated excellent internal consistency (Cronbach α = 0.95). The factor structure reflects four core domains: pain/fatigue, neuropsychiatric, neurologic, and viral-like symptoms. Symptom burden was significantly associated with depression (r s = 0.60), anxiety (r s = 0.55), pain (r s = 0.75), fatigue (r s = 0.77), functional impairment (r s = 0.79), and general health (r s = -0.58). The GSQ-30 detected significant change in symptom burden before and after antibiotic therapy; this change correlated with change in functional impairment. The GSQ-30 total score significantly differed for erythema migrans vs. three other groups (post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome, depression, healthy controls). The GSQ-30 total scores for traumatic brain injury and depression were not significantly different from post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome. Conclusions and Relevance: The GSQ-30 is a valid and reliable instrument to assess symptom burden among patients with acute and post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome and is sensitive in the detection of change after treatment among patients with erythema migrans. The GSQ-30 should prove useful in clinical and research settings to assess multi-system symptom burden and to monitor change over time. The GSQ-30 may also prove useful in future precision medicine studies as a clinical measure to correlate with disease-relevant biomarkers.

Mentalization is proposed to underlie the disturbed interpersonal relatedness that is a hallmark of borderline personality disorder (BPD). Despite growing evidence of BPD in adolescents, studies examining mentalization in relation to adolescent BPD have remained limited. Given contradictory findings of this relationship, particularly with adults, further research of mentalization in adolescents with BPD is warranted. The current study further clarifies the nature of mentalizing impairments, related to BPD, by examining different aspects of mentalization between adolescents with BPD (n = 26) and a group of healthy controls (n = 25). Findings support studies that suggest that mentalization may be an important treatment target, influencing BPD symptoms and interpersonal functioning in adolescents with BPD. They also support the importance of examining mentalizing abilities in relation to varying levels of complexity, interpersonal contexts, and levels of arousal. Limitations and further research are discussed.