Background: The aim of this study was to test whether maladaptive cognitions or difficulties in emotion regulation mediate the association between change in number of adverse life events (i.e. change in life stress) and emotional and behavioural problems in adolescence. Method: Our sample consisted of 557 young people, aged 10-19 years from a state secondary school in London. We fitted a multiple mediator model to contrast five mediators: three maladaptive cognitions (negative cognitive errors, negative automatic thoughts, and dysfunctional attitudes) and the two emotion regulatory processes of cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression. We adjusted for gender, age, ethnicity, special educational needs and family poverty. Results: Taken as a set, our mediators explained the effect of change in life stress on adolescent emotional and behavioural problems. However, cognitive reappraisal, expressive suppression, dysfunctional attitudes and negative cognitive errors did not contribute to the indirect effect above and beyond negative automatic thoughts. Conclusions: Only negative automatic thoughts mediated the association between change in life stress and emotional and behavioural problems. This suggests the possibility that negative automatic thoughts is the pathway through which an increase in life stress may lead to emotional and behavioural problems in adolescents. Key Practitioner Message:• An increase in the number of adverse life events (increase in life stress) was strongly associated with emotional and behavioural problems in adolescence• Increased life stress was associated with negative automatic thoughts, negative cognitive errors, dysfunctional attitudes, expressive suppression and cognitive reappraisal, which were, in turn, associated with emotional and behavioural problems • However, only negative automatic thoughts explained the association between increased life stress and emotional and behavioural problems

Previous studies have established the role of various measures of cognitive functioning in dampening the association between adverse life events ('life stress') and adolescents' emotional and behavioural problems. However, it is not yet clear if general cognitive ability ('intelligence') is a protective factor. In this study of 1,175 10- to 19-year-olds in five secondary schools in England, we explored this issue. We found that even after controlling for sex, age, family poverty, and special educational needs, the association of life stress with emotional, hyperactivity, and conduct problems was significant. General cognitive ability moderated the association between life stress and conduct problems; among adolescents with higher than average general cognitive ability, the association between life stress and conduct problems was non-significant.

No abstract

Utilising an online survey, this study aimed to investigate the concurrent effects of pre-pandemic and COVID-19 stress on resilience in Mental Health Psychology Practitioners (MHPPs) ( n  = 325), focussing on the mediation effects of specific individual factors. Optimism, burnout and secondary traumatic stress, but not coping strategies, self-efficacy, compassion satisfaction, or self-compassion, mediated both the relationship between pre-pandemic stress and resilience and COVID-19 stress and resilience. Increased job demands caused by the pandemic, the nature and duration of COVID-19 stress may explain this finding. Training and supervision practices can help MHPPs deal with job demands under circumstances of general and extreme stress.

The aim of this study was to test for gender differences in how negative cognitive errors (overgeneralizing, catastrophizing, selective abstraction, and personalizing) mediate the association between adverse life events and adolescents' emotional and behavioural problems (measured with the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire). The sample consisted of 202 boys and 227 girls (aged 11-15 years) from three state secondary schools in disadvantaged areas in one county in the South East of England. Control variables were age, ethnicity, special educational needs, exclusion history, family structure, family socio-economic disadvantage, and verbal cognitive ability. Adverse life events were measured with Tiet et al.'s (1998) Adverse Life Events Scale. For both genders, we assumed a pathway from adverse life events to emotional and behavioural problems via cognitive errors. We found no gender differences in life adversity, cognitive errors, total difficulties, peer problems, or hyperactivity. In both boys and girls, even after adjustment for controls, cognitive errors were related to total difficulties and emotional symptoms, and life adversity was related to total difficulties and conduct problems. The life adversity/conduct problems association was not explained by negative cognitive errors in either gender. However, we found gender differences in how adversity and cognitive errors produced hyperactivity and internalizing problems. In particular, life adversity was not related, after adjustment for controls, to hyperactivity in girls and to peer problems and emotional symptoms in boys. Cognitive errors fully mediated the effect of life adversity on hyperactivity in boys and on peer and emotional problems in girls.