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3 results

  • Prenatal maternal stress shapes children’s theory of mind: the QF2011 Queensland Flood Study

  • G. Simcock, S. Kildea, G. Elgbeili, D. P. Laplante, V. Cobham, S. King
  • Journal:
    Journal of Developmental Origins of Health and Disease / Volume 8 / Issue 4 / August 2017
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    24 March 2017, pp. 483-492

  • Research shows that stress in pregnancy has powerful and enduring effects on many facets of child development, including increases in behavior problems and neurodevelopmental disorders. Theory of mind is an important aspect of child development that is predictive of successful social functioning and is impaired in children with autism. A number of factors related to individual differences in theory of mind have been identified, but whether theory of mind development is shaped by prenatal events has not yet been examined. In this study we utilized a sudden onset flood that occurred in Queensland, Australia in 2011 to examine whether disaster-related prenatal maternal stress predicts child theory of mind and whether sex of the child or timing of the stressor in pregnancy moderates these effects. Higher levels of flood-related maternal subjective stress, but not objective hardship, predicted worse theory of mind at 30 months (n=130). Further, maternal cognitive appraisal of the flood moderated the effects of stress in pregnancy on girls’ theory of mind performance but not boys’. These results illuminate how stress in pregnancy can shape child development and the findings are discussed in relation to biological mechanisms in pregnancy and stress theory.

  • 11 - Work and Unemployment as Stressors

  • from Part II - The Social Context of Mental Health and Illness
  • Edited by Teresa L. Scheid, University of North Carolina, Charlotte, Tony N. Brown, Vanderbilt University, Tennessee
  • Book:
    A Handbook for the Study of Mental Health
    Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    16 November 2009, pp 213-225

  • Summary

    The biological or medical approach views mental illness as if it were a disease or physical defect in the brain or body. Within the social approach, there are three dominant theories of mental illness etiology: stress theory, structural strain theory and labeling theory. This chapter describes each theory's basic concepts and assumptions, theoretical limitations and advantages, and implications for treating or preventing mental illness. According to stress theory, when events and strains accumulate in people's lives, they can overwhelm people's psychosocial resources and abilities to cope and then generate symptoms of psychological disorder. Labeling theory picks up at this point and suggests that frequent, severe, or highly visible symptoms or symptoms exhibited by those with little social prestige or power, can launch a victimizing process. Societal reactions to symptoms may result in the person's receiving a formal psychiatric diagnosis, becoming hospitalized, and, ultimately, accepting a mental patient identity.

  • 2 - Understanding social support within the context of theory and research on the relationship of life stress and mental health

  • from PART I - CONCEPTS AND ORIGINS OF SOCIAL SUPPORT
  • Edited by T. S. Brugha, University of Leicester
  • Book:
    Social Support and Psychiatric Disorder
    Published online:
    31 October 2009
    Print publication:
    24 August 1995, pp 41-60

  • Summary

    This chapter discusses the several parallel themes which have occurred within the subdomains of stress, social support, personality and coping. The stress and the social support domains are the proper conceptualisation and measurement of the concepts. Cobb defined social support as information that one belongs to a socially coherent community and that one is loved and esteemed. One early measure of life stress included in its domain questions about changes in sleeping and eating habits; however, changes in these functions often occur in depressive disorders and hence are enquired about in measures of psychological distress. Self-esteem has also recently received some attention as a personality trait that might play an important mediating role in the stress-distress relationship. The more physiological roots of stress theory would seem to lead to various possibilities regarding biological mechanisms of effect, but these would seem to have more relevance for physical than for psychological disorder.