Literature about parenting traditionally focused on caring behaviors and parental representations. Nowadays, an innovative line of researches, interested in evaluating the neural areas and hormones implicated in the nurturing and caregiving responses, has developed. The only way to permit a newborn to survive and grow up is to respond to his needs and in order to succeed it is necessary, first of all, that the adults around him understand what his needs are. That’s why adults’ capacity of taking care of infants cannot disregard from some biological mechanisms, which allow them to be more responsive to the progeny and to infants in general. Many researches have proved that exist specific neural basis activating in response to infant evolutionary stimuli, such as infant cries and infant emotional facial expression. There is a sort of innate predisposition in human adults to respond to infants’ signals, in order to satisfy their need and allow them to survive and become young adults capable of taking care of themselves. This article focuses on those researches that have investigated, in the last decade, which are the neural circuits underlying parental behavioral responses. Moreover, the paper compares the results of those studies that investigated the neural responses to infant stimuli under different conditions: familiar versus unknown children, parents versus non-parents and normative versus clinical samples (depression, addiction, adolescence and PTSD).

Background and aims: Past research on the associations between psychopathological symptoms and technological-based addictions, i.e., Internet Gaming Disorder (IGD) and Social Media Addiction (SMA), showed contradictory results in adolescents and adult populations. The present study investigated correlations between adolescents’ psychopathological risks and impulsivity, IGD and SMA. Methods: A sample of 656 participants (338 males; M_age = 16.32 years) was divided into three age groups (early, mid-, and late adolescence) and completed a battery of scales comprising the (i) Internet Gaming Disorder Scale–Short Form, (ii) Bergen Social Media Addiction Scale, (iii) Barratt Impulsiveness Scale for Adolescents, and (iv) Symptom Checklist-90-R. Results: The significance of the correlations was not corroborated in the basic tables. Significant associations appeared only in the adolescent subgroups, sometimes for bivariate and sometimes for partial correlations and with different patterns of associations between males and females. Moreover, both technological addictions were correlated with impulsiveness in bivariate and partial correlations. Discussion and conclusions: Following a developmentally-oriented approach to determine the patterns of associations between technological behavioral addictions and psychopathology in the specific sub-phases of early-, mid- and late-adolescence, this exploratory research showed how these associations might change depending on the developmental phase and gender of the individual. Future research is needed to provide empirical evidence of specific emotional–psychopathological correlations.

Children’s emotional and relational development can be negatively influenced by maternal substance abuse, particularly through a dysfunctional caregiving environment. Empirical evidence indicates that parenting is negatively influenced by maternal drug use and its associated adverse psychosocial conditions. As a consequence, many interventions have focused on enhancing parental skills, but they have often overlooked the emotional and relational features of the mother-infant bond. Instead, Attachment Theory offers a privileged framework to analyse how drug addiction can affect the quality of an adult’s attachment style, parenting attitudes and behaviours towards the child and can have a detrimental effect on the co-construction of the attachment bond by the mother and the infant. Several studies have also identified a prevalence of insecure patterns among drug-addicted mothers and their children, but a specific model of insecurity is still needed to be attested, requiring further investigations. In recent years, a number of protocols have been developed in order to strengthen the relationship between drug-abusing mothers and their children, drawing lessons from Attachment Theory. The present study reviews the literature on the adult and infant attachment style in the context of drug addiction, describing currently available treatment programs which address parenting and specifically focus on the mother-infant bond, relying on Attachment Theory.

Parental substance use is a major risk factor for child development, heightening the risk of drug problems in adolescence and young adulthood, and exposing offspring to several types of traumatic event. First, prenatal drug exposure can be considered a form of trauma itself, with subtle but long-lasting sequalae at the neuro-behavioural level. Second, parents’ addiction often entails a childrearing environment characterised by poor parenting skills, disadvantaged contexts and adverse childhood experiences, leading to dysfunctional outcomes. Young adults born from/raised by parents with drug problems and who develop a Substance Used Disorder (SUD) themselves might display a particularly severe condition in terms of cognitive deficits and impaired personality function. This preliminary study aims to investigate the role of early exposure to drugs as a traumatic event, capable of affecting the psychological status of young drug addicts. In particular, it intends to examine the neuropsychological functioning and personality profile of young adults with severe SUDs who were exposed to drugs early in their family context. The research involved 3 groups each consisting of 15 young adults (aged 18-24): a group of inpatients diagnosed with SUDs and exposed to drugs early, a comparison group of non-exposed inpatients and a group of non-exposed youth without SUDs. A neuropsychological battery (Esame Neuropsicologico Breve-2), an assessment procedure for personality disorders (Shedler-Westen Assessment Procedure-200) and the Symptom CheckList-90-Revised were administered. According to present preliminary results, young drug addicts exposed to drugs during their developmental age were characterised by elevated rates of neuropsychological impairments, especially at the expense of attentive and executive functions; personality disorders were also common but did not differentiate them from non-exposed young people with SUDs. Alternative multi-focused prevention and intervention programs are needed for children of drug-misusing parents, addressing executive functions and adopting a trauma-focused approach.

Intimate partner violence and drug-addicted women: from explicative models to gender-oriented treatments

Several studies have reported high rates of alexithymia in drug-dependent individuals, but supporting evidence attests association between alexithymia and a variety of psychiatric disorders, raising doubts about its specificity. Moreover, controversies are emerging about alexithymia assessment: self-report measures present shortcomings with respect to discriminant validity and reliability. As regards treatment for substance use disorders (SUDs), alexithymia has been linked to poorer outcomes, but the results are inconsistent. The aim of the present study is to investigate alexithymia in substance-dependent young adults by examining: (a) the specificity of alexithymia in drug-dependent inpatients, compared to healthy individuals and patients with psychiatric disorders (behavioral and emotional disorders) and (b) the predictivity of alexithymia in determining treatment outcomes in terms of relapses, drop outs from treatment and the rate of relapse per month of treatment. Two studies were conducted to fulfill these aims: Study 1 and Study 2. Study 1 involved 90 late adolescents, aged 17-21. To fulfill the first aim, 30 inpatients diagnosed with SUD were compared with 30 healthy controls and 30 individuals referred to an outpatient neuropsychiatric unit (a). The participants completed the Toronto Alexithymia Scale-20 (TAS-20) and the Symptom Checklist-90-Revised (SCL-90-R). The results indicated that both clinical groups reported higher TAS-20 scores than the non-clinical subjects, but they did not differ from each other (a); moreover, a large correlation was detected between alexithymia and depressive symptoms, as assessed by the SCL-90-R. Study 2 involved 55 inpatients with SUD recruited in a therapeutic community. The participants completed the TAS-20, and clinicians filled out the Observer Alexithymia Scale (OAS). No association was found between self-report and observational measures. Neither self-reported nor observed alexithymia predicted the number of relapses, drop-out from treatment, or the rate of relapses per month of treatment (b). When the interaction with gender was explored, the global score of alexithymia and the "Distant" OAS subscale predicted the number rate relapses only in males. The TAS-20 did not discriminate between the clinical groups. The limited ability of both observed and self-reported measures in predicting treatment outcome raises questions on the specificity of alexithymia among the substance-dependent inpatient population.