A growing literature suggests that emotion dysregulation underpins different psychological difficulties in childhood (Althoff, Verhulst, Rettew, Hudziak, & van der Ende, 2010). Emotion dysregulation reflects deficits in the ability to regulate intense, negative, and shifting emotional states and it is seen as a transdiagnostic process that is linked to increased risk for the development and maintenance of a range of psychopathology in school-age children, including Anxiety, Attention Problems and Eating Disorders. Only a limited number of studies have investigated genetic associations with emotion dysregulation and similar constructs in childhood (Kim et al., 2011). However, these clinical manifestations are told to share bio-genetic alterations, such methylation of portions of DNA particularly related to the secretion and re-uptaking of peripheral dopamine (Cimino et al., 2018). Emotional-behavioral problems in children are also associated with parental psychopathological risk and their impaired sensitivity in response to offspring's characteristics (e.g. their difficult temperament). The results of this study may contribute to the knowledge of the possible association between psychopathological and genetic-biological correlates in the development of psychopathology in children and may inform prevention and intervention programs in public health.
The study may contribute to the knowledge of the possible association between psychopathological risk indicators and biological related indicators in order to identify risk and/or protective factors in the development of psychopathological disorders in children and in the context of significant emotional relationships. These factors can be taken into account for the development of more targeted and effective intervention programmes, starting with clinical interventions proposals that can be differentiated and made more effective according to risk factors emerging from research data, and the specific diagnostic picture presented by the child and his/her families. The results of the project may help reduce the costs of public health programs, by identifying possible strategies of prevention and reducing the access of children and families to mental health services. Preventing mental problems in children will reduce psychopathology in the adult population, allowing further diminishing costs for the intervention. It may also allow the drafting of guidelines differentiated for risk and pathological situations, taking into account the most relevant adaptive factors to focus on the intervention: for example, the evaluation of paternal contribution could provide important indications on possible strategies of intervention involving the whole family.
An important value of this project is to introduce and validate innovative and non-invasive measures for the assessment of methylation through the gathering of saliva instead of blood samples (which are much more difficult to obtain and that can even pose ethical concerns if used in children).
Identifiable biomarkers will be validated by correlating with the psychometric scores obtained by individuals. This type of psychobiological approach has already been successfully used with regards to ADHD at the Higher Institute of Health in a study conducted in the years 2010-2013 on a clinical sample (Giana et al., 2015). Most of the previous literature has sought to confirm hypotheses about the association of psychopathological symptoms with candidate genes or bio-genetic alterations. This project does not limit to a replication of this approach but adds to previous research in that it will apply the concept of research on Big Data to biological and genetic datasets adding to previous literature and allowing empirical-driven etiopathogenetic models for the onset of mental health problems in children and for the identification of resilience factors. Bioinformatics and genomics are considered two of the hottest topics in the scientific community and are contributing to creating new research perspectives. This project can contribute to building a large knowledge repository of classification models related to specific mental health problems and their correlates.
Very limited are the previous studies that have favored the associations between genetic, physiological and emotional-behavioral variables in samples in developmental age and in their parents. For this reason, the present study could lead to an advancement of current knowledge on the psycho-biological models underlying the psychopathological risk and could, therefore, support the development of prevention and intervention programmes.