This study sought to advance understanding of the potential long-term consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic for child development by characterizing trajectories of maternal perinatal depression, a common and significant risk factor for adverse child outcomes. Data came from 393 women (86% White, 8% Latina; mean age = 33.51 years) recruited during pregnancy (n = 247; mean gestational age = 22.94 weeks) or during the first year postpartum (n = 146; mean child age = 4.50 months; 55% female). Rates of depression appear elevated, relative to published reports and to a pre-pandemic comparison group (N = 155). This study also provides evidence for subgroups of individuals who differ in their depressive symptom trajectories over the perinatal period. Subgroup membership was related to differences in maternal social support, but not to child birth outcomes.

This study used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine the neural systems activated during an intertemporal choice task in a group of 14- to 19-year-old adolescents, as well as the relationship of such activation patterns to individual differences in the self-reported ability to engage in nonimmediate thinking (i.e., less impulsive and more future-oriented thoughts and action). With increasing age, there was greater differentiation between patterns of brain activity for immediate versus future choices across three distinct brain systems involved in intertemporal choice--those involved in exerting control over behavior, attributing affective value to choices, and imagining future outcomes. Furthermore, a greater propensity toward self-reported nonimmediate thinking was associated with decreased activity in the systems involved in cognitive control, possibly suggesting that individuals with greater self-reported nonimmediate thinking need to rely less on cognitive control regions during conditions of intertemporal choice. These results highlight the role that both developmental age and individual differences play in influencing neural systems involved in intertemporal choice. Implications for understanding the onset of substance abuse disorders during adolescence are discussed.

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Existing and emerging evidence indicates that perinatal depression is a key contributor to preventable morbidity and mortality during and after childbearing. Despite this, there are few effective options for prevention and treatment that are readily accessible for and appealing to pregnant people. Aspects of routine health care systems contribute to this situation. Furthermore, societal and health care systems factors create additional barriers for people of color, people living in rural regions, and people living in poverty. Our interprofessional team of perinatal care providers, mental health providers, community partners, health services scientists, health equity scientists, and business leaders developed and are piloting a perinatal mental health preventive intervention designed to increase access and appeal of a program incorporating mindfulness cognitive behavioral therapy with proven efficacy in preventing perinatal depression. In this article, we briefly summarize key systems barriers to delivering preventive care for perinatal depression in standard prenatal care clinics. We then describe Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Perinatal Depression and outline our adaptation of this intervention, Center M. Finally, we identify next steps, challenges, and opportunities for this recent innovation.

Childhood adversity is commonly measured via retrospective self-report on the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) questionnaire and the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ). To facilitate comparison of studies and data employing these measures, we employed a variety of approaches to equate CTQ and ACE questionnaire responses pertaining to emotional, physical, and sexual abuse, as well as emotional and physical neglect. The accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity of these approaches suggest moderate to strong levels of questionnaire correspondence in a sample of middle-class young adults living in the United States (N=471; 273 female; mean age=23 years, SD=1.7 years) across maltreatment types, except for physical neglect (which exhibited poorer and more variable correspondence across approaches). Results in a validation sample (N=64; 43 female; mean age=19.1, SD=0.5) did not suggest model overfitting. We also provide an interactive web-based tool to examine questionnaire correspondence across approaches.