Criticism from parents hits harder on depressed teens, research reveals

A recent study published in Psychological Medicine showed that adolescents with depression might be especially attentive to parental criticism, as indexed by increased subgenual anterior cingulate cortex or sgACC and hippocampus activity and memorize this criticism more. Together with lower positive impact of praise, these findings suggest that cognitive biases in adolescent depression may affect how parental feedback is processed, and may be fed into their self-views.

For the study, adolescents with depression (n = 20) and healthy controls (n = 59) received feedback supposedly provided by their mother or father in the form of negative (‘untrustworthy’), neutral (‘chaotic’), and positive (‘respectful’) personality evaluations while in an MRI-scanner. After each feedback word, adolescents reported their mood. Beforehand, adolescents had rated whether these personality evaluations matched their self-views.

In both groups, mood decreased after criticism and increased after praise. Adolescents with depression reported blunted mood responses after praise, whereas there were no mood differences after criticism. Neuroimaging analyses revealed that adolescents with depression (v. healthy controls) exhibited increased activity in response to criticism in the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex, temporal pole, hippocampus, and parahippocampal gyrus.

Praise consistent with adolescents' self-views improved mood independent of depression status, while criticism matching self-views resulted in smaller mood increases in adolescents with depression (v. healthy controls). Exploratory analyses indicated that adolescents with depression recalled criticism (v. praise) more.

Reference: Van Houtum, L., Wever, M., Van Schie, C., Janssen, L., Wentholt, W., Tollenaar, M., . . . Elzinga, B. (2023). Sticky criticism? Affective and neural responses to parental criticism and praise in adolescents with depression. Psychological Medicine, 1-10. DOI: 10.1017/S0033291723002131