Social conflict among strongest predictors of teen mental health concerns

New research shows family fights, peer bullying outweigh other risk factors for depression, more

WashU Medicine

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In a new study, researchers at WashU Medicine mined an enormous set of data collected from pre-teens and teens across the U.S. and found that conflicts with family or peers were the strongest predictors of near- and long-term mental health issues. Biological sex was also an important predictor, with girls experiencing more and worse mental health challenges than boys.

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Credit: Sara Moser

A new study from researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis provides some answers. Published Sept. 15 in Nature Mental Health, it mined an enormous set of data collected from pre-teens and teens across the U.S. and found that social conflicts — particularly family fighting and reputational damage or bullying from peers — were the strongest predictors of near- and long-term mental health issues. The research also revealed sex differences in how boys and girls experience stress from peer conflict, suggesting that nuance is needed when assessing social stressors in teens.

“Understanding which youth are most likely to go on to develop larger mental health concerns before they experience strong functional decline is critical to mitigating potential damage,” said co-senior author Nicole Karcher, PhD, an assistant professor of psychiatry at WashU Medicine. “By emphasizing prevention strategies free of labels and stigma, we can provide youth experiencing mental health concerns with tools to address risk factors that can negatively affect long-term mental health and well-being.”

A computational approach to mental health

The researchers analyzed data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study — a long-term, multisite study that is tracking the neurodevelopment of more than 11,000 U.S. children ages 9 to 16 from across the country, including a site based at WashU. The data gathered by the investigators include neuroimaging scans, psychological tests and personal and family mental health histories.

Using this data set, Karcher worked with co-senior author Aristeidis Sotiras, PhD, an assistant professor at WashU Medicine Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology and the WashU Medicine Institute for Informatics, Data Science & Biostatistics; coauthor Deanna M. Barch, PhD, the Gregory B. Couch Professor of Psychiatry at WashU; first author Robert Jirsaraie, a doctoral student in the Division of Computational & Data Sciences at WashU who is co-advised by Sotiras and Barch; and other colleagues to develop computational models to predict current and future mental health symptoms as well as changes in symptoms over time. They considered 963 predictors of mental health across nine broad categories, such as family dynamics, environmental factors (including peer relationships), demographic factors, and brain structure and function from neuroimaging data.

Sotiras noted that machine learning enables researchers to analyze such highly dimensional data and identify patterns that predict outcomes. “It’s a powerful way to move beyond single-factor explanations toward a more comprehensive, data-driven understanding of risk,” he said.

The team found that family conflict, particularly fighting and frequent criticism between family members, and reputational damage among peers were the strongest predictors of current mental health difficulties such as depression, anxiety or behavioral problems.

Neuroimaging data were among the least predictive variables in these models. This finding is consistent with results from a prior analysis by Jirsaraie, Barch, Sotiras and colleagues, published in Molecular Psychiatry, which used machine learning to build brain models of psychopathology based on neuroimaging data from 956 participants ages 8 to 22.

Biological sex emerged as a critical factor in the new study, with girls experiencing more mental health symptoms on average and a worsening of symptoms over time compared to boys. The study also picked up a subtle distinction between how girls experienced peer victimization versus boys: Girls suffered more from being victims of gossip and isolation, while the mental health of boys was more affected by aggression or hostility toward peers.

Jirsaraie noted that even the team’s best performing models explained only about 40% of individual outcomes, which, while high compared to similar algorithmic tools, indicate that more research is needed to gain a complete understanding of all the factors that influence mental health.

“As we’re developing better computational models, it’s important to make sure our predictions are grounded in biologically meaningful information,” Sotiras said. “Given enough data, these powerful tools can find patterns. As we move beyond brain imaging modalities to include other risk factors to better predict mental health trajectories, it’s a continuous effort to improve our data sets, increase our sample size and validate our model.”

Key factors influencing persistent psychotic-like experiences

Although data from brain imaging was not a strong predictor for mental health symptoms generally in this group of adolescents, for some conditions, it can be insightful. This was shown in an earlier analysis by Karcher, Barch and colleagues of ABCD data from more than 8,000 children, published in August in Nature Mental Health, which looked at the relationship between structural and cognitive changes in the brain during adolescence and the future risk of severe mental health disorders.

Specifically, the study looked at these brain changes over time in children ages 9 to 13 who reported psychotic-like experiences (PLEs). These are unusual thoughts and perceptions that, when they are persistent and distressing, have been tied to a greater risk of being diagnosed with a severe mental health disorder in adulthood, such as schizophrenia. The researchers found that the small subset of participants who had the most persistent and distressing PLEs had greater changes in brain structure — for example, decreases in cortical thickness, area and volume — and steeper declines on cognitive tests over time than those who experienced transient or no PLEs.

The study also found that these brain changes and declines in cognition may help explain the association between environmental risk factors, such as being exposed to financial adversity and unsafe neighborhoods, and a greater risk of persistent, distressing PLEs. According to the researchers, exposure to environmental stress may cause physical changes in the brain that then make a child more vulnerable to abnormal thoughts and perceptions.

Intervening early

Together, the findings highlight how social and environmental factors can impact adolescent brain development and contribute to mental health symptoms over time. Because they aren’t necessarily fixed, these factors are prime targets for intervention by parents, teachers, counselors and clinicians.

“The factors influencing mental health are complex, but this is ultimately a simple story,” Karcher said. “Adolescents are spending much of their time in these home and school environments, so interactions that take place there can have really large detrimental effects on mental health.”

On the flip side, these relationships can also have a buffering or protective effect. Being more mindful about the social environment of teens can lead to earlier detection and potential intervention around mental health issues, which become more prominent during this stage in life, Jirsaraie noted.

“Our findings can be very empowering for parents and teachers, as they have some control in mitigating the largest risk factors affecting the mental health of teens,” he said. “Resolving social conflicts could have a positive and lasting impact.”

Jirsaraie RJ, Barch DM, Bogdan R, Marek SA, Bijsterbosch JD, Sotiras A, Karcher NR. Mapping multimodal risk factors to mental health outcomes. Nature Mental Health. September 15, 2025. DOI: 10.1038/s44220-025-00500-9

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (DGE-2139839; DGE-1745038), the National Research Service Award from the National Institute of Mental Health (F31MH135640), which were acquired by R.J. Additional support was provided by the National Institute of Mental Health grant R01MH129493 which was acquired by D.M.

Karcher NR, Dong F, Paul SE, Johnson EC, Kilciksiz CM, Oh H, Schiffman J, Agrawal A, Bogdan R, Jackson JJ, Barch DM. Cognitive and global morphometry trajectories as predictors of persistent distressing psychotic-like experiences in youth. Nature Mental Health. August 12, 2025. DOI: 10.1038/s44220-025-00481-9

This work was supported by National Institutes of Health grants U01 DA041120 (D.M.B.), K23 MH121792 (N.R.K.), R01-MH139880 (N.R.K.), R01-DA054869 (A.A.), K01-DA051759 (E.C.J.), R01-DA054750 (A.A. and R.B.) and F31-AA029934 (S.E.P.).

This article reflects the views of the authors and may not reflect the opinions or views of the NIH or ABCD consortium investigators.

About WashU Medicine

WashU Medicine is a global leader in academic medicine, including biomedical research, patient care and educational programs with more than 3,000 faculty. Its National Institutes of Health (NIH) research funding portfolio is the second largest among U.S. medical schools and has grown 83% since 2016. Together with institutional investment, WashU Medicine commits well over $1 billion annually to basic and clinical research innovation and training. Its faculty practice is consistently among the top five in the country, with more than 2,000 faculty physicians practicing at 130 locations. WashU Medicine physicians exclusively staff Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Children’s hospitals — the academic hospitals of BJC HealthCare — and Siteman Cancer Center, a partnership between BJC HealthCare and WashU Medicine and the only National Cancer Institute-designated comprehensive cancer center in Missouri. WashU Medicine physicians also treat patients at BJC’s community hospitals in our region. With a storied history in MD/PhD training, WashU Medicine recently dedicated $100 million to scholarships and curriculum renewal for its medical students, and is home to top-notch training programs in every medical subspecialty as well as physical therapy, occupational therapy, and audiology and communications sciences.

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Journal

Nature Mental Health

DOI

10.1038/s44220-025-00500-9 

Method of Research

Computational simulation/modeling

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Mapping multimodal risk factors to mental health outcomes

 

Research shows anger, not fear, shifts political beliefs

Washington University in St. Louis

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Political attitudes and opinions can and do shift, sometimes drastically. Recent psychological research from Washington University in St. Louis offers insight into how emotional responses to threats contribute to shifts in political attitudes.

One striking example of how emotions drive political shifts is that people tend to become more supportive of conservative views during times of external, or foreign, threat.

Immediately after the 9/11 attacks, for example, national polls showed that support for President George W. Bush — a moderately conservative Republican — soared by 39 points to a record-breaking 90% approval rating. During that time, people supported conservative policies, such as the Patriot Act, which emphasized national security.

The underlying processes responsible for these shifts have been less clear, though. Psychologists have long assumed fear makes people seek security. This idea goes back to early theories of authoritarianism, which suggest that strict rules and strong leaders are more appealing when people are fearful. However, previous research in this field has not measured emotion to confirm that fear is, in fact, driving these changes.

A recent study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General provides much-needed clarity on these issues. With evidence from carefully structured experiments, researchers found that anger, not fear, is responsible for driving shifts in political attitudes.

 “Anger is a more viable candidate for driving these sorts of effects,” said Alan Lambert, an associate professor of psychological and brain sciences in Arts & Sciences at WashU. He said that anger is one of the few emotions associated with the “approach” part of the brain. As a result, experiencing anger causes people to lash out rather than retreat.

“They want retribution (for terrorist attacks), they want to punish the people who did it, that motive is driven primarily by anger,” added Lambert, who co-authored the research with Seattle University’s Fade Eadeh. To study whether anger might be the main force behind these political shifts, Lambert and Eadeh conducted three experiments with over 2,000 participants.

In one experiment, participants read either a news story about a terrorist attack or a neutral scientific article about food intolerance. Then they rated a politician who supported a military or diplomatic approach to terrorism. In a second experiment, people were either reminded about terrorism, framing it in terms of justice or security, or they read an article unrelated to terrorism. In a third study, they asked people what made them angry or fearful about terrorism or to write about something irrelevant. In these latter two experiments, they also asked participants to evaluate various political policies, some related to Islamist terrorism and some that were not. Afterward, participants shared their views on different political issues, some related to terrorism and some not.

Across all three studies, the researchers found that anger — not fear — was the primary emotion tied to a shift toward conservative views. But these changes were narrow. In particular, people shifted their opinions only on topics connected to the threat they were considering. For example, anger about terrorism made people more supportive of aggressive military policies towards Islamists, but had no impact on unrelated issues, such as abortion, big business or anti-Mexican attitudes.

As shown by earlier research by Eadeh, anger also plays the dominant role in cases where a threat makes liberalism more appealing. In particular, when people were reminded of a danger in an area where liberals are seen as more capable — such as health care or the environment — anger again led to a shift in political preferences related to these specific issues, but this time toward liberal views.  

The issue is complex, warned Eadeh, who was a doctoral student with Lambert at WashU before joining Seattle University.

“Sometimes, political views and public policies may be the answer to certain threats. But it’s also possible that some threats can lead to political polarization, while others have no clear impact on politics at all,” he said.

In the future, Lambert hopes to explore whether some threats might lead people to become even more set in their beliefs, making liberals more liberal and conservatives more conservative.

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Eadeh FR, Lambert AJ. An anger-based framework for understanding terrorism-driven “shifts to the right”: How and why Islamist-focused threats produce narrow changes in political preferences. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Epub 2025. DOI https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001737

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Journal

Journal of Experimental Psychology General

 

A new analysis could map the ancient history of Earth’s surface

Yale University

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New Haven, Conn. — Earth’s Ediacaran Period, roughly 630 to 540 million years ago, has always been something of a magnetic minefield for scientists.

During earlier and later time periods, tectonic plates kept a steady pace, climate zones were normal, and the planet’s magnetic field wobbled modestly around the north and south poles (while occasionally reversing).

But the physics of the Ediacaran don’t seem to add up. Over several decades of study, scientists have found the Ediacaran to be enigmatic, with wild fluctuations in the magnetic signatures preserved in rocks from that age — a variability not seen in rocks that are older or younger. Such seemingly chaotic behavior has presented researchers with great challenges, for example, in using ancient magnetism in rocks (“paleomagnetism”) to produce maps of the drifting tectonic plates from that period.

Theories about the cause of the Ediacaran fluctuations have varied. Some scientists suggest it was due to unusually rapid movement of tectonic plates; other scientists say it may have been caused by a fast shifting of the Earth underneath its spin axis (a process called “true polar wander”).

But what if the variations in magnetism during the Ediacaran weren’t random at all? What if they had a global geometry with some order amid the chaos?

That’s the finding of a new study in the journal Science Advances from an international, Yale-led team of researchers.

“We are proposing a new model for the Earth’s magnetic field that finds structure in its variability rather than simply dismissing it as randomly chaotic,” said David Evans, a professor of Earth and planetary sciences in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences and co-author of the new study. “We have developed a new method of statistical analysis of Ediacaran paleomagnetic data that we think will hold the key to producing robust maps of the continents and oceans from that period.”

For the study, the researchers focused on a region known as the Anti-Atlas, a mountain range in Morocco, where co-authors from Cadi Ayyad University had identified a series of volcanic layers from the Ediacaran that are exceptionally well preserved and exposed.

The team conducted a layer-by-layer study of the rocks’ magnetism, collected in the field as oriented samples that were brought to Yale for measurements by highly sensitive laboratory equipment.

“Previous studies of rocks from this time period often employed traditional analytical tools that assumed the Earth’s magnetic field behaved similarly in the past as it does now,” said the study’s first author, James Pierce, a Ph.D. student in Yale’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

“We took a fresh approach. We were able to determine precisely how fast the Earth’s magnetic poles were changing by sampling for paleomagnetism at high stratigraphic (layer-by-layer) resolution and determining precise ages for these rocks,” Pierce said.

Co-authors from Dartmouth College, as well as research institutions in Switzerland and Germany, provided additional information on the rock layers and high-precision dates that demonstrated the dramatic magnetic changes occurred over intervals of thousands of years, rather than millions.

The data ruled out theories of rapidly shifting tectonic plates and “true polar wander,” Evans and Pierce said. Those processes would have required much longer time periods to develop.

In addition to documenting the speed of magnetic variability, the researchers found that the variability had an ordered — if unusual — structure. With such a structure in mind, the researchers devised a novel statistical approach to determine shifts in the planet’s magnetic poles that appear to have tumbled all the way around the planet, rather than merely wobbling about the spin axis. The new mathematical method provides a framework for reconstructing the Ediacaran world in future studies.

“My entire career has been dedicated to charting the motions of continents, oceans, and tectonic plates over the Earth’s surface, throughout its history,” said Evans, who is also director of the Yale Paleomagnetic Laboratory.

“The Ediacaran Period in particular, has posed a major barrier in that long-term goal, because global paleomagnetic data just didn’t make much sense,” he said. “If our proposed, new statistical methods prove to be robust, we can bridge the gap between older and younger time periods to produce a consistent visualization of plate tectonics spanning billions of years, from the earliest rock record to the present day.”

The research was funded, in part, by grants from the National Science Foundation.

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Journal

Science Advances

 

Surprising bacteria discovery links Hawaiʻi’s groundwater to the ocean

University of Hawaii at Manoa

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Microscopic images of the newly discovered bacterium, Caulobacter inopinatus. (A) A single cell with a tail-like flagellum used for swimming. (B, C) Cells that have attached to a surface with stalk-like extensions.

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Credit: University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa

A new species of bacteria has been discovered off the coast of Oʻahu, shedding light on how unseen microbial life connects Hawaiʻi’s land and sea ecosystems.

Researchers at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa identified Caulobacter inopinatus, a previously unknown species of bacteria found in seawater collected near a beach on Oʻahu’s south shore. The finding—published October 16 in the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology—was unexpected because all other known species in the Caulobacter genus (a scientific group that includes closely related species) are from freshwater or soil environments, not the ocean.

The discovery, made during a UH Mānoa undergraduate marine microbiology class, began as a routine demonstration on how to grow bacteria from seawater samples. When one colony growing on a Petri dish looked different from all the other colonies, further testing confirmed it was something entirely new.

From land to sea

Scientists found that C. inopinatus cannot survive in salt concentrations typical of seawater, despite being isolated from it. This paradox led researchers to investigate how it ended up in the ocean. They determined it was likely transported from land by submarine groundwater discharge—the natural movement of fresh groundwater through the seabed into the sea. These discharges are known to carry nutrients and pollutants into nearshore waters; in this case, they may also move land-based microorganisms. Microbial exchanges are important because bacteria play critical roles in nutrient cycling, water quality and coastal ecosystem health.

“Understanding how microbes move between land and sea helps scientists track the flow of nutrients and contaminants that can affect coastal water quality, fisheries and coral reef health—issues that directly impact Hawaiʻi’s communities and economy,” said study co-author and UH Mānoa School of Life Sciences Professor Stuart Donachie. “Discoveries like C. inopinatus help us better trace how land-based activities and natural processes influence marine environments at a microscopic level.”

The species name, inopinatus, comes from the Latin word for “unexpected,” reflecting both the chance nature of its discovery and its surprising characteristics.

Collaborative work

The research was part of ongoing microbial diversity studies led by Donachie. Undergraduate researchers Austin Dubord and Mia Sadones contributed to the project through UH Mānoa’s Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program, which supports student-led research and creative work. Collaborators included UH Mānoa faculty Michael Norris and Jennifer Saito, graduate students Chiyoko Onouye and Thi Hai Au La, and University of Mississippi Assistant Professor and UH Mānoa PhD graduate Rebecca Prescott.

The study is dedicated to the late UH Mānoa Earth Sciences Professor Craig Glenn (1954–2024), whose pioneering research on submarine groundwater discharge in Hawaiʻi helped illuminate how freshwater and seawater interact along island coastlines, and to former UH undergraduate student Justin Bukunt (1983–2011), whose early research on groundwater discharge at Kawaikui Beach Park informed this discovery. Their contributions continue to inspire new generations of scientists exploring Hawaiʻi’s unique coastal environments.

The School of Life Sciences is housed in UH Mānoa’s College of Natural Sciences.

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Journal

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SYSTEMATIC AND EVOLUTIONARY MICROBIOLOGY

DOI

10.1099/ijsem.0.006932 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Caulobacter inopinatus sp. nov., from seawater off O‘ahu, Hawai‘i, and emended description of the genus Caulobacter

Article Publication Date

16-Oct-2025