Parental Psychological Control and Autonomy Granting: Distinctions and Associations with Child and Family Functioning

Objective:This study utilized an observational coding scheme to identify parenting behavior reflecting psychological control and autonomy granting, and examined relations between these parenting dimensions and indices of child and family functioning. Design: A community sample of 90 preadolescents (aged 10.5 to 12 years) and both of their parents engaged in a triadic interaction that was coded for parental psychological control and autonomy granting. Participants also completed measures of child adjustment, interparental conflict, and triangulation. Results: Factor analyses indicated that a two-factor model better fit the data than a one-factor model, suggesting that psychological control and autonomy granting are best conceptualized as independent but related constructs. Parental psychological control and autonomy granting exhibited some shared and some unique correlates with indices of child and family functioning. Hierarchical regressions revealed significant interactions between these dimensions, suggesting that the strength of some associations between parents\u27 use of psychological control and youth adjustment problems depends on the level of autonomy granting exhibited by the parent. Conclusions: By examining psychological control and autonomy granting simultaneously as unique constructs, this study identifies patterns of psychological control and autonomy granting that undermine youth adjustment. Findings inform targeted intervention efforts for families of preadolescent youth

Analysis of shared heritability in common disorders of the brain

Disorders of the brain can exhibit considerable epidemiological comorbidity and often share symptoms, provoking debate about their etiologic overlap. We quantified the genetic sharing of 25 brain disorders from genome-wide association studies of 265,218 patients and 784,643 control participants and assessed their relationship to 17 phenotypes from 1,191,588 individuals. Psychiatric disorders share common variant risk, whereas neurological disorders appear more distinct from one another and from the psychiatric disorders. We also identified significant sharing between disorders and a number of brain phenotypes, including cognitive measures. Further, we conducted simulations to explore how statistical power, diagnostic misclassification, and phenotypic heterogeneity affect genetic correlations. These results highlight the importance of common genetic variation as a risk factor for brain disorders and the value of heritability-based methods in understanding their etiology.</p

Differentiating parental psychological control from autonomy granting and examining their relations with family dynamics

Parental psychological control refers to intrusive strategies that infringe upon the psychological world of the child. Parents who demonstrate high levels of psychological control pressure their children to comply with their personal standards via manipulation of the parent-child bond, negative, affect-laden comments, and excessive personal control. Research investigating the impact of parental psychological control on child adjustment has indicated that it has harmful effects on children, and is related to disruption of the child\u27s self-system (i.e., self-will, self-regulation, and interpersonal functioning). Less is known about why some parents engage in more psychologically controlling parenting strategies than others, or about the context in which a high degree of parental psychological control is likely to occur. Moreover, questions have been raised as to the nature of the distinction between parental psychological control and autonomy granting. Contributing to this confusion is the use of the terms interchangeably in the literature, the variety of other terms used to describe the same parenting phenomena (i.e., intrusiveness, overprotectiveness, restrictive parenting, etc.), and the conceptual overlap present in most methods used to measure psychological control. Consequently, the goals of the current project were to develop a more standardized definition of parental psychological control and autonomy granting, to examine variation in the use of psychological control and promotion of autonomy, and to study the complex interrelationships between psychological control, autonomy granting, and dynamics within the family environment. In this multi-method, multi-informant study, 92 preadolescents and their parents completed several measures assessing parenting and parent/child adjustment, and participated in family interaction tasks which were later coded for psychologically controlling parenting behaviors and parenting strategies which fostered child autonomy. Results supported the conceptualization of parental psychological control and autonomy granting as unique constructs, and supplementary analyses revealed gender differences and distinct child adjustment correlates. Interparental conflict emerged as a robust predictor of increased failure to promote autonomy across parents, but not of increased psychological control, and further exploration revealed that autonomy granting served as a mediator of the relationship between interparental conflict and child externalizing problems. Implications for future research are discussed

A Phase II Study to Evaluate the Safety and Efficacy of Prasinezumab in Early Parkinson's Disease (PASADENA) : Rationale, Design, and Baseline Data

Altres ajuts: F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd.Background: Currently available treatments for Parkinson's disease (PD) do not slow clinical progression nor target alpha-synuclein, a key protein associated with the disease. Objective: The study objective was to evaluate the efficacy and safety of prasinezumab, a humanized monoclonal antibody that binds aggregated alpha-synuclein, in individuals with early PD. Methods: The PASADENA study is a multicenter, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled treatment study. Individuals with early PD, recruited across the US and Europe, received monthly intravenous doses of prasinezumab (1,500 or 4,500 mg) or placebo for a 52-week period (Part 1), followed by a 52-week extension (Part 2) in which all participants received active treatment. Key inclusion criteria were: aged 40-80 years; Hoehn & Yahr (H&Y) Stage I or II; time from diagnosis ≤2 years; having bradykinesia plus one other cardinal sign of PD (e.g., resting tremor, rigidity); DAT-SPECT imaging consistent with PD; and either treatment naïve or on a stable monoamine oxidase B (MAO-B) inhibitor dose. Study design assumptions for sample size and study duration were built using a patient cohort from the Parkinson's Progression Marker Initiative (PPMI). In this report, baseline characteristics are compared between the treatment-naïve and MAO-B inhibitor-treated PASADENA cohorts and between the PASADENA and PPMI populations. Results: Of the 443 patients screened, 316 were enrolled into the PASADENA study between June 2017 and November 2018, with an average age of 59.9 years and 67.4% being male. Mean time from diagnosis at baseline was 10.11 months, with 75.3% in H&Y Stage II. Baseline motor and non-motor symptoms (assessed using Movement Disorder Society-Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale [MDS-UPDRS]) were similar in severity between the MAO-B inhibitor-treated and treatment-naïve PASADENA cohorts (MDS-UPDRS sum of Parts I + II + III [standard deviation (SD)]; 30.21 [11.96], 32.10 [13.20], respectively). The overall PASADENA population (63.6% treatment naïve and 36.4% on MAO-B inhibitor) showed a similar severity in MDS-UPDRS scores (e.g., MDS-UPDRS sum of Parts I + II + III [SD]; 31.41 [12.78], 32.63 [13.04], respectively) to the PPMI cohort (all treatment naïve). Conclusions: The PASADENA study population is suitable to investigate the potential of prasinezumab to slow disease progression in individuals with early PD. Trial Registration: NCT03100149