Increasingly, health providers are recognizing the importance of providing behavioral and mental health services to children and adolescents. As a result, school districts are adopting the School-Based Mental Health Program approach to provide mental health services to their students. The purpose of this study is to test if there is a disparity between children being referred due to externalizing behavior versus internalizing behaviors. The data was collected from archival sources, and it was analyzed utilizing the SPSS software for a quantitative and descriptive study. The findings indicated that students experiencing Internalizing and/or Externalizing behaviors are almost equally receiving services. This study found that most of the referrals were made by school counselors, only a few by parents and even less by students themselves. For this reason, the study’s recommendation is for social workers to engage in providing training for parents and students in identifying mental health issues before they become a significant problem.

In this study, behavioral (post-error response time) and electrophysiological (ERN amplitude and latency) indices of error-monitoring were examined in individuals with autism and typical development. Participants were presented with a series of faces, and they were asked to quickly and accurately determine the gender or the affect of the faces. Younger participants showed post-error slowing for the Gender Task, while older participants showed post-error slowing for the Affect Task. With age, participants showed a greater differentiation between correct and incorrect responses on both ERN amplitude and ERN latency. For the Gender Task only, participants with typical development showed a greater differentiation between correct and incorrect responses than participants with autism on ERN amplitude. Evidence of more error monitoring on the Affect Task was associated with less autistic symptomology, fewer internalizing problems, and better social skills. Evidence of more error monitoring on the Gender Task was associated with greater autistic symptomology and fewer internalizing problems. Overall, age, regardless of diagnostic group, had a substantial effect on face processing and error monitoring abilities. Individuals with autism showed an ability to engage in error monitoring, with only mild impairments in error monitoring. The data suggest that error monitoring is not a core deficit of autism; however, individual differences in error monitoring may significantly moderate the expression of autism.

No description available.

Self-esteem and internalizing symptoms have been found to be of great consequence throughout the lifespan, but behavioral genetic research exploring these variables in young children is lacking. Minimal research has explored the heritability of internalizing difficulties or self-esteem within preschool-aged children, and no studies have done so while also considering parenting behaviors. Thus, the present study investigated the heritability of self-esteem and internalizing symptoms and examined the relations between self-esteem, internalizing symptoms, and parenting behaviors within preschool-aged twins. Data were collected from 61 twin pairs at the ages of 4 and 5. Parenting behavior data were obtained from parent-child interactions that took place in a lab setting when the twins were 4 years old. At age 5, twins were administered a self-report measure of self-esteem and parents completed a measure of internalizing symptoms. Results indicated that internalizing symptoms were significantly heritable but self-esteem was not, although there was some support for the presence of budding genetic influences for self-esteem. Self-esteem and internalizing symptoms were significantly positively related within one sub-sample of twins and were not significantly correlated within the replication sub-sample. Interestingly, self-esteem and internalizing symptoms were not significant predictors of each other above and beyond genetic influences. Parenting behavior was not significantly related to either self-esteem or internalizing symptoms. Results showed that children who over-rated their peer-related competence tended to have more internalizing symptoms than those who under-rated or realistically rated themselves in this domain. Findings demonstrate that genes are important to consider when investigating internalizing symptoms and self-esteem in this age group. Also, although little support was found for the importance of self-esteem accuracy in children's internalizing symptoms, more research is necessary to understand it.

abstract: Maternal intrusiveness is an important predictor of child mental health problems. Evidence links high levels of maternal intrusiveness to later infant negativity, and child internalizing problems. However, children also influence the manner in which parents interact with them. For example, infants that show more negative emotionality elicit less positive parenting in their caregivers. Infant affect is also associated with later child internalizing difficulties. Although previous research has demonstrated that maternal intrusiveness is related to infant affect and child internalizing symptomatology, and that infant affect is a predictor of internalizing problems and parenting, no studies have looked at the transactional relations between early maternal intrusiveness and infant affect, and whether these relations in infancy predict later childhood internalizing symptomatology. The present study investigates young children's risk for internalizing problems as a function of the interplay between maternal intrusiveness and infant affect during the early infancy period in a low-income, Mexican-American sample. Participants included 323 Mexican-American women and their infants. Data were collected when the infants were 12, 18, 24, and 52 weeks old. Mothers were asked to interact with their infants in semi-structured tasks, and mother and infant behaviors were coded at 12, 18, and 24 weeks. Maternal intrusiveness was globally rated, and duration of infant negative- and positive affect was recorded. Mother reports of child Internalizing symptomatology were obtained at 52 weeks. Findings suggest that there are transactional relations between early maternal intrusiveness and infant negative affect, while the relations between infant positive affect and maternal intrusiveness are unidirectional, in that infant positivity influences parenting but not vice versa. Further, findings also imply that neither maternal intrusiveness, nor infant affect, influence later toddler internalizing symptomatology. Identifying risk processes in a Mexican-American sample adds to our understanding of emerging infant difficulties in this population, and may have implications for early interventions. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Psychology 2014

The primary goal of the present research was to clarify the role of marriage in the developmental course of internalizing symptoms (i.e., depression and anxiety). Aims were pursued in a community sample of 103 couples assessed five times over the first seven years of marriage, and results are presented in two separate parts. Although marital discord has been linked to both depression and anxiety, our understanding of how marriage contributes to the development of internalizing symptoms is limited in scope and lacking specificity. First, it is unclear whether the marital relationship contributes to the broad dimension of internalizing symptoms as opposed to specific diagnoses. Second, it is unclear how the marital relationship contributes to internalizing symptoms: through global marital dissatisfaction or through specific relationship processes (and which processes). The purpose of the research presented in Part 1 was to address these two issues. Further, marital discord is rarely incorporated into broader etiological frameworks of psychopathology (e.g., a diathesis-stress framework). The purpose of research presented in Part 2 was to develop and test a novel conceptual framework clarifying how specific marital processes (i.e., conflict management, partner support, emotional intimacy, and power and control), neuroticism, and stress work together to impact the development of internalizing symptoms over time. Results suggest that neuroticism contributes to the development of internalizing symptoms primarily through non-marital stress and an imbalance of power and control in one's marriage for husbands and through greater emotional disengagement for wives. Whereas stress originating outside of the marriage was more critical to the mental health of men, the marital relationship played a more central role for women. Marital processes remain significant predictors of internalizing symptoms when controlling for other well-established risk factors, demonstrating the need to routinely consider marital factors in etiological models of individual psychopathology. Further, results allow for the identification of specific clinical targets that can be prioritized in interventions aimed at preventing internalizing disorders. Specific recommendations for adapting marital preparation programs to prevent individual psychopathology are discussed.

Internalizing disorders can have negative effects ranging from diminished self-esteem to suicidal thoughts and behaviors . Native American children and adolescents often face pressures that put them at increased risk for the development of internalizing disorders, yet research within this population is almost nonexistent. Given the serious implications of and the lack of research on internalizing disorders among this minority group, the present study was designed to provide information on the rate of internalizing symptoms in a sample of Native American adolescents, and provide normative data utilizing this sample for the Internalizing Symptoms Scale for Adolescents. Data were collected using the Internalizing Symptoms Scale for Adolescents, the Reynolds Adolescent Depression Scale, the Revised Children's Manifest Anxiety Scale, and the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory for Children. Findings indicate that the Native American sample of adolescents are endorsing clinically significant levels internalizing symptoms at rates similar to those found in the general population.

A survey addressing teacher referral of children with internalizing symptoms was developed and distributed to 883 first- through sixth-grade teachers in the state of Utah. The survey presented vignettes of children exhibiting symptoms of internalizing disorders. Respondents were asked if they would refer the child described in each vignette. The survey also asked respondents for information regarding the number of years they had been teaching, training they had received regarding children's mental health, the types of mental health services available within their schools, and their beliefs regarding types of services schools should provide. Four ANOV As were calculated in analyzing the potential factors influencing teachers' decisions to refer the children in the vignettes. Further, descriptive data were used in illustrating additional information provided by the survey regarding the referral of children with internalizing disorders. Among the factors considered, teacher training was found to be statistically significant. Number of years of experience, teacher beliefs, and number of services available did not reach statistical significance. The majority of teachers supported a variety of school-based mental health services.

No description available.

<p dir="ltr">This dissertation sought to contribute a pair of genetically informed studies strategically designed to make potentially causal inferences about potential co-developing processes of internalizing symptoms, body mass index (BMI) and relative pubertal timing during adolescence. Paper 1 used the Early Growth and Development Study (EGDS; N=561), a prospective adopted-at-birth design which primarily accounts for passive gene environment correlation by virtue of youth having been adopted at birth and placed in non-relative adoptive families. Paper 2 used the discordant sibling design from a subsample of siblings from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study (N=3792), which by design accounts for all confounding of the effects of a risk factor with all shared familial influences that siblings share and all environmental differences that exist between families. The hypothesized associations were further examined in subsamples of twins and MZ twins to make increasingly strict, potentially causal inferences. Across the two studies, I hypothesized that higher internalizing symptoms and higher BMI would positively co-develop at the within person and within family level, respectively for each paper. I hypothesized that there would be unidirectional within person effects of relatively earlier pubertal development on higher internalizing symptoms, across both studies. Finally, I hypothesized that there would be positive co-development of higher BMI and earlier relative pubertal timing early on in both studies, but that only higher BMI would continue to unidirectionally predict earlier relative pubertal timing across the two studies’ ends. In paper 1, specific hypotheses were completely unsupported. In Paper 2, hypotheses were partially supported for two of out three pairs of phenotypes. Specifically, there was evidence of one within family cross-lagged effect between higher discordance in internalizing symptoms at age 10 and higher discordance in BMI at age 11. There was also evidence of one within family cross-lagged effect between higher discordance in relative pubertal timing at age 12 and higher discordance in internalizing symptoms at 13. Findings from both papers indicated that the association between BMI and relative pubertal timing is likely largely confounded by common stable between person, stable discordance, and stable family average factors. Implications and limitations are discussed.</p>