Emotion Regulation in Children at High Genetic Risk for Bipolar Disorder or Schizophrenia
Poster C127, Saturday, October 22, 11:30 am - 1:00 pm, Le Baron
Katrine Spang1,2,3,6, Carsten Obel5, Jens Richardt Jepsen2,6, Anne Thorup2,3,6, Birgitte Klee Burton1,2,3,6, Camilla Christiani2,3,6, Ditte Ellersgaard2,3,6, Nicoline Hemager1,2,3,6, Aja Greve4,6, Ole Mors4,6, Merete Nordentoft2,3,6, Kerstin Jessica Plessen1,3,6; 1Child and Adolescent Mental Health Center, Mental Health Services - Capital Region of Denmark, 2Mental Health Centre Copenhagen, Mental Health Services – Capital Region of Denmark, 3University of Copenhagen - Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, 4Psychosis Research Unit, Aarhus University Hospital, Risskov, 5University of Aarhus – Department of Public Health, 6The Lundbeck Foundation Initiative for Integrative Psychiatric Research, iPSYCH
Objective: The ability of emotion regulation has an important predictive value for the manifestation and the course of mental health problems. This substudy of The Danish High Risk and Resilience Study-VIA7 aims to investigate abilities of emotion regulation in children of parents with bipolar disorder and compare those with children of parents with schizophrenia and children of healthy controls. Methods: A stratified cohort of 522 children, age 7, with zero (n=200), one or two parents with schizophrenia (n=200) or bipolar disorder (n=122) has been extensively examined regarding psychiatric status, behavioural and social functioning, neuro- and social cognitive abilities and neuromotor development to identify both early risk markers and resilience factors for mental health in this population-based sample. To assure representativeness, families were invited through the civil registries. At the clinic and in their home we assessed the children’s ability of emotion regulation using specific questionnaires, cognitive testing, an emotion recognition task and finally a direct observation of the child’s emotional reactions in a social context during a frustrating puzzle task (Tangram task). Hypothesis: We hypothesize that children at high genetic risk for bipolar disorder on a group level demonstrate more problems regulating their emotions than children of healthy controls. We expect that children of parents with schizophrenia will be impaired to a lesser degree compared with children of parents with bipolar disorder. Moreover, we expect that impairments of attention, motor inhibition, or intelligence cannot explain a compromised capacity of emotion regulation. Results: Preliminary results will be presented at the conference.
Topic Area: Ultra High Risk / Prodromal Research