Family Conflict Associated With Intrinsic Hippocampal-OFC Connectivity in Adolescent Depressive Disorder

BackgroundFamily environment and life events have long been suggested to be associated with adolescent depression. The hippocampus plays a crucial role in the neural mechanism of major depressive disorder (MDD) through memory during stressful events. However, few studies have explored the exact neural mechanisms underlying these associations. Thus, the current study aimed to explore alterations in hippocampal functional connectivity (FC) in adolescent MDD based on resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging and further investigate the relationship between hippocampal FC, environmental factors, and clinical symptom severity.MethodsHippocampal FC was calculated using the seed-based approach with the bilateral hippocampus as the seed for 111 adolescents with and without MDD; comparisons were made between participants with MDD and controls. We applied the Chinese version of the Family Environment Scale (FES-CV) and Adolescents Self-Rating Life Events Checklist (ASLEC) to evaluate family environment and life stress. Their relationship with hippocampal FC alterations was also investigated.ResultsWe found that compared to controls, adolescents with MDD showed decreased connectivity between the left hippocampus and bilateral orbital frontal cortex (OFC) and right inferior temporal gyrus. In addition, the hippocampal-OFC connectivity was negatively correlated with conflict scores of the FES-CV in the MDD group and mediated the association between family conflict and depressive and anxiety symptoms.ConclusionOur findings are novel in the field and demonstrate how family conflict contributes to MDD symptomatology through hippocampal-OFC connectivity; these findings may provide potential targets for personalized treatment strategies.

How Work–Family Conflict and Work–Family Facilitation Affect Employee Innovation: A Moderated Mediation Model of Emotions and Work Flexibility

This paper aims to verify the effects of work–family conflict and work–family facilitation on employee innovation in the digital era. Based on resource conservation theory, this study regards the work–family relationship as a conditional resource. Employees who are in a state of lack of resources caused by work–family conflict will maintain existing resources by avoiding the consumption of further resources to perform innovation activities; employees who are in a state of sufficient resources are more willing to invest existing resources to obtain more resources. In this study, 405 employees from enterprises in the Chinese provinces of Jiangsu, Anhui, Sichuan, and Guangdong, and in the municipality of Tianjin were selected as the research object. These enterprises are knowledge-based companies, and their employees frequently transfer knowledge at work. We collected questionnaires from the frontline employees of these companies. The results show that negative and positive emotions mediate the effect of work–family conflict and work–family facilitation on employee innovation. Moreover, work flexibility has a significant moderating effect on the mediating role of emotions between work–family facilitation and employee innovation behavior. In the digital era, when facing different work–family situations, employees need to pay attention to and dredge their negative emotions to avoid reducing their innovative behaviors due to self-abandonment; in parallel, they need to guide their positive emotions toward innovation, so as to promote their innovative consciousness and behavior. This paper expands the research perspective of employee innovation behavior.

The Mediation of Family Context and Youth Depressive Symptoms by Adolescent Emotion Regulation

During adolescence, young people develop crucial capacity for emotion regulation, and family context can be a risk or protective factor for adolescents developing affective disorders. We leveraged data from the Florida Youth Substance Abuse Survey ( N = 7664) to propose adolescent emotion regulation as a mediator between family conflict, family protection, and adolescent depressive symptoms in the social development model. Latent moderated structural equation modeling revealed that adolescent regulation of negative emotions mediated the relationship between family conflict and depressive symptoms—adolescents with higher family conflict had more emotion regulation difficulties and more depressive symptoms. Adolescent age was a moderator such that associations between family protective factors and reduced depression, and between family conflict and emotion regulation difficulties were weaker in high school compared to middle school. Findings highlight the importance of youth emotion regulation processes and family emotional context in reducing adolescent depressive symptoms.

Association of off-the-job training with work performance and work–family conflict among physicians: a cross-sectional study in China

ObjectivesTo determine whether experiences of off-the-job training in domestic (DT) and overseas study (OS) settings are associated with work performance and work–family conflict in physicians.Design, setting and participantsWe conducted a national cross-sectional survey in 77 public hospitals across seven provinces in China between July 2014 and April 2015. Participants were 3182 physicians.ExposureParticipants were categorised into four groups: none, DT only, OS only and DT and OS.Primary outcome measuresWork performance was assessed by work engagement, career attrition and patient-centred care. Work–family conflict was assessed by affecting care for family, feeling guilty towards family and receiving complaints from family.ResultsA total of 25.89% participants had experienced DT only, 8.71% OS only and 8.47% DT and OS. After adjustment for potential confounders, participants who had experiences of DT and OS compared with those with no training were more likely to report positive work performance (pride in work: OR=2.11, 95% CI: 1.43 to 3.10; enjoyment of work: OR=1.67, 95% CI: 1.11 to 2.51; turnover intention: OR=0.54, 95% CI: 0.38 to 0.77; early retirement: OR=0.63, 95% CI: 0.45 to 0.89; and exhaustion: OR=0.66, 95% CI: 0.45 to 0.98) and less work–family conflicts (feeling guilty towards family: OR=0.51, 95% CI: 0.35 to 0.74; and complaints from family: OR=0.66, 95% CI: 0.47 to 0.91). We found no obvious association between DT/OS experience with patient-centred care.ConclusionsPhysicians with DT and OS experiences are more likely to have better work performance and less work–family conflict than those without such experience. Physicians face increasing pressure to pursue continuing education and experience associated distress. Therefore, hospitals and government policy-makers should promote DT and OS.