Emotional dysregulation as an underpinning mechanism of Attention Problems, Anxiety and Eating Disorders in school-age children: a study on the intergenerational transmission of psychopathological risk and DNA methylation in parents and children.
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.