New Study Finds Depressed Adolescents More Sensitive to Parental Criticism and Less Responsive to Praise
A recent study published in Psychological Medicine has shed light on the emotional and brain responses of adolescents with depression to parental feedback. The study, conducted by researchers from Leiden University in the Netherlands, revealed that adolescents with depression are more sensitive to parental criticism and less sensitive to parental praise compared to their healthy counterparts.
Adolescent depression is a prevalent and serious mental health concern that often leads to a diminished sense of self. Negative interactions between parents and adolescents have been linked to the development of depression. However, little is known about how adolescents with depression specifically respond to parental feedback. This study aimed to fill that gap by investigating the emotional and brain responses of depressed adolescents to parental criticism and praise.
For the study, 20 Dutch adolescents diagnosed with either dysthymia or major depressive disorder were recruited, alongside 59 healthy adolescents without depression. The parents of both groups were also invited to participate.
The participants were presented with one-word descriptions of personality characteristics and asked to rate them as negative, neutral, or positive. They were also asked to rate how applicable these words were to themselves. The adolescents then underwent magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans to measure their brain activity.
During the MRI scans, the adolescents were falsely informed that their parents would choose feedback words that described their personality. In reality, the participants were shown preprogrammed feedback words, and after viewing each word, they reported their mood. They were later asked to recall as many of the feedback words as they could in a two-minute period.
The results of mathematical modeling revealed that both depressed and healthy adolescents experienced a decrease in mood after receiving criticism and an increase in mood after receiving praise, compared to neutral feedback. However, depressed adolescents experienced a blunted increase in mood following praise, suggesting that they are less responsive to positive feedback.
The MRI scans indicated that depressed adolescents exhibited increased brain activity, particularly in the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (sgACC), in response to criticism. The sgACC is thought to play a crucial role in the regulation of mood. Depressed adolescents also showed increased activity in the temporal pole, hippocampus, and parahippocampal gyrus, which are associated with social knowledge and memory of lived events. This finding aligned with the observation that depressed adolescents tended to remember criticism more vividly than praise.
Furthermore, the study found that depressed adolescents had more negative self-views, rating positive feedback words as less applicable to themselves and negative or neutral words as more applicable, compared to healthy adolescents. Interestingly, both groups experienced an improved mood when praise aligned with their self-views. However, criticisms that aligned with their self-views resulted in a smaller increase in mood for depressed adolescents, suggesting that parental criticism may overpower their sense of self.
Lead researcher Lisanne van Houtum believes that these findings could have implications for treatment. Identifying personality characteristics that adolescents value about themselves may be key to improving their depressed mood. Van Houtum suggests that parents could be taught to identify and acknowledge these valued characteristics, thereby supporting the development of a positive self-view.
Despite the study’s valuable insights, there were some limitations. The sample size was small due to difficulties in recruitment during the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, some participants had other medical or psychiatric conditions that may have influenced their emotional states. The study also did not fully represent parents with harsh or neglectful parenting styles, which are strongly associated with adolescent depression.
Nevertheless, the study highlights the important role parents play in the mental health of their adolescent children. By understanding how depressed adolescents respond to parental feedback, interventions can be developed to support these vulnerable individuals and improve their overall well-being.
The study, titled “Sticky criticism? Affective and neural responses to parental criticism and praise in adolescents with depression,” was authored by Lisanne A.E.M. van Houtum, Mirjam C.M. Wever, Charlotte C. van Schie, Loes H.C. Janssen, Wilma G.M. Wentholt, Marieke S. Tollenaar, Geert-Jan Will, and Bernet M. Elzinga.