Citation

Wiglesworth A. Biol. Psychiatry 2024; 95(12): 1060-1062.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2024, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.biopsych.2024.04.007

PMID

38811075

Abstract

Adolescence is a dynamic developmental period during which the increased salience of peer relations is undergirded by widespread neurobiological development and change. For some youth, this period of change is accompanied by intense emotional distress that can present in the form of suicidal thoughts and behaviors (STBs). As noted by Miller et al. (in the current issue of Biological Psychiatry, several theories highlight the role of interpersonal stressors (e.g., peer rejection, family conflict) as critical contributors to STBs among youth. However, as the authors set out to test, it may not just be the experience of social stress that increases suicide risk for youth, but how those social stressors impact subsequent emotion regulation processes. In their study, the authors examined whether neural activation during passive viewing and effortful emotion regulation (i.e., cognitive reappraisal) of negative stimuli was altered following a targeted social rejection task, comparing whether these patterns differed between girls with and without a history of STBs (N = 138; 9-15 years of age). They found that girls with histories of suicidal behaviors showed less activation during emotion regulation before experiencing rejection and that after the targeted social rejection, girls with STB histories showed greater activation in the right inferior frontal gyrus during emotion regulation than did those without STB histories. The authors interpret these findings to suggest that girls with suicide behavior histories may be at a higher risk for experiencing emotion dysregulation in response to rejection compared with girls without histories of suicidal behaviors, and that girls with STB histories may be more susceptible to distress from social rejection, requiring them to exert greater cognitive effort to engage in emotion regulation after the stress exposure. Though preliminary, this innovative study design sets the stage for future research that will continue to unravel the neurobiological and cognitive mechanisms that link social rejection and increased STBs among youth. As we continue to pursue this critical line of questioning, it is increasingly important to detail when and for whom these processes unfold, which requires situating our research within additional components of adolescent development.

Language: en

Keywords

Humans; Risk Factors; Adolescent; *Suicide/psychology; *Stress, Psychological/physiopathology; Adolescent Development/physiology; Minority Groups/psychology; Psychological Distance