Bonnie Klimes-Dougan

• Ph.D.
• University of Minnesota

Prosociality, which refers to dispositions to allocate one's attention and energy to the needs of others, is indicative of social proficiency and adaptive functioning in adolescence. Greater abilities for self‐regulation in adolescence are widely considered to foster prosociality (Hastings et al., 2023; Hodge et al., 2023), including physiological...

Background A growing body of literature suggests that creative arts interventions can effectively support mental health and well-being in young people. We recently reported that after participating in “Creativity Camp”– a 2-week creative arts group intervention– 69 adolescents with depression showed significantly reduced depression symptoms and imp...

Understanding the relative influences of age, pubertal development, and sex assigned at birth on brain development is a key priority of developmental neuroscience given the complex interplay of these factors in the onset of psychopathology. Previous research has investigated how these factors relate to static (time-averaged) functional connectivity...

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a complex psychiatric disorder that affects the lives of hundreds of millions of individuals around the globe. Even today, researchers debate if morphological alterations in the brain are linked to MDD, likely due to the heterogeneity of this disorder. The application of deep learning tools to neuroimaging data, c...

Introduction Societal stressors place a tremendous burden on individuals who identify with a sexual minority identity. While minority stress experienced by racial/ethnic minority groups has been linked to accelerated aging, this link has yet to be examined among sexual minority youth. This study explores whether sexual minority youth who indicate e...

Sexual minority adolescents experience puberty earlier than their heterosexual peers. Early puberty is an indicator of premature aging and can be partly driven by chronic stress linked to discrimination. Nonetheless, the neural, cognitive, and social development linked to puberty enables adolescents to explore and understand their sexual identities...

The diagnosis of bipolar disorder (BD) in young children has been a topic of debate, in part owing to varied interpretation of manic-like symptoms. We examined how expert academic clinicians participating in the pediatric bipolar biobank varied in their interpretation and application of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) cr...

Accurately predicting individual antidepressant treatment response could expedite the lengthy trial‐and‐error process of finding an effective treatment for major depressive disorder (MDD). We tested and compared machine learning‐based methods that predict individual‐level pharmacotherapeutic treatment response using cortical morphometry from multis...

Depression is a serious public health problem that often emerges during adolescence. Many adolescents do not respond to standard treatments, necessitating the development of novel interventions. We conducted a preliminary study to assess the impact of a novel creative arts intervention on depression and well-being in adolescents. In this quasi-expe...

Dante Cicchetti propelled forward the field of developmental psychopathology by advancing this framework and championing new methods, including emphasizing the central role that multilevel analysis holds for explicating pathways of risk and resilience. His work continues to change the face of existing science. It has also paved the way for the form...

Background Adolescence is a critical period for brain development, consolidation of self-understanding, and onset of non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI). This study evaluated the RDoC (Research Domain Criteria) sub-construct of Self-Knowledge in relation to adolescent NSSI using multiple units of analysis. Methods One hundred and sixty-four adolescent...

Engagement in nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) often begins in adolescence, and commonly occurs when a person is emotionally dysregulated. Parental emotion socialization (ES) plays a key role in shaping children’s emotional expression, experience, and regulation. Longitudinal work is needed to understand how links between parental ES and adolescent c...

Background: Depression is a serious public health problem that often emerges during adolescence. Many adolescents do not respond to standard treatments, necessitating the development of novel interventions. We conducted a preliminary study to assess the impact of a creative arts intervention on depression and well-being in adolescents. Methods: Si...

Background: Adolescence brings concurrent biological, cognitive, and hormonal changes. Youth respond to these changes with various coping methods such as nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI). This behavior often occurs in the context of intense negative emotion, with the intention of finding relief. The manner in which parents respond to their children’s...

Introduction The complexity of brain signals may hold clues to understand brain-based disorders. Sample entropy, an index that captures the predictability of a signal, is a promising tool to measure signal complexity. However, measurement of sample entropy from fMRI signals has its challenges, and numerous questions regarding preprocessing and para...

Machine learning (ML) techniques have gained popularity in the neuroimaging field due to their potential for classifying neuropsychiatric disorders. However, the diagnostic predictive power of the existing algorithms has been limited by small sample sizes, lack of representativeness, data leakage, and/or overfitting. Here, we overcome these limitat...

The contributions of religion to reduced suicide risk have been studied in adults and adolescents, though to our knowledge no comprehensive investigation has been conducted in early adolescents, at a time coinciding with emergence of suicide risk trajectories. In this largest study to date on this topic, we aimed to characterise the contributions o...

Social dysfunction plays a critical role in the development and maintenance of depression in both adolescents and adults. Interpersonal psychotherapy (IPT) and interpersonal psychotherapy for depressed adolescents (IPT-A) are effective, evidence-based, and time-limited treatments for depression that aim to mitigate depressive symptoms by strengthen...

Background: Preliminary evidence shows that discordance in stress experience, expression, and physiology (EEP) in adolescents is linked to depression, suicidal ideation (SI), non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI), and brain functioning. This study employs person-centered analysis to probe the relationship between stress responses, psychopathology, and n...

Resilience promotes positive adaptation to challenges and may facilitate recovery for adolescents experiencing psychopathology. This work examined concordance across the experience, expression, and physiological response to stress as a protective factor that may predict longitudinal patterns of psychopathology and well-being that mark resilience. A...

Background: Non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) is a highly prevalent clinical concern in adolescents and is associated with impaired functioning and suicide risk. The BRIDGES (BRain Imaging Development of Girls' Emotion and Self) study was designed to collect longitudinal clinical and neurobiological data to advance our understanding of NSSI in adole...

Objective: Native American adolescents are disproportionately burdened by suicidality. Here, we examine patterns of reporting of suicide ideation and suicide attempt among Native American youth compared to those from other ethnoracial backgrounds, as this data is important for grounding commonly subscribed to frameworks of suicide risk (e.g., idea...

The potential impact of screen media activity (SMA) on youth development is a topic of heated debate, with inconsistent findings and concerns about SMA measurement.1 There is a growing call for more precise measurement and analyses of SMA, focusing more on how (in what way youth are using screens) and less on how much (aggregate screen time). There...

Preliminary results from a University of Minnesota pilot study examining biological and psychological impacts of stress for sexual minority emerging adults. N=40 assigned male at birth participants between the ages of 18 and 25. Findings suggest some key aspects of the biological stress response may be related to mental health functioning and key a...

This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note...

Apophenia is the tendency to falsely detect meaningful relationships and may indicate susceptibility to more extreme expressions on the psychotic spectrum. This pilot investigated the fragmented ambiguous object task (FAOT), a new measure designed to assess apophenia behaviorally in a sample of adolescents with and without mood disorders using an i...

Purpose The childhood-to-adolescence transition is a notable period of change including pubertal development, neurodevelopment, and psychopathology onset, that occurs in divergent patterns between sexes. This study examined effects of sex and puberty on cortical thickness (CT) in children and explored whether CT changes over time related to emergen...

Clinical psychology is a young science. Despite immense growth over 100+ years, human suffering from mental health conditions remains extensive, and core scientific issues in our field continue to be the subject of ongoing debate. Clinical practice depends on the growth of our research base for elucidating etiology, systematic improvements in provi...

There is now strong evidence documenting an association between maternal depression and psychopathology in children and adolescents, but an increased understanding of the explanatory mechanisms is needed. This longitudinal study tested a model to determine if parenting processes that may promote parentification of adolescents (coded from narratives...

Identifying brain alterations associated with suicidal thoughts and behaviors (STBs) in young people is critical to understanding their development and improving early intervention and prevention. The ENIGMA Suicidal Thoughts and Behaviours (ENIGMA-STB) consortium analyzed neuroimaging data harmonized across sites to examine brain morphology associ...

Machine learning (ML) techniques have gained popularity in the neuroimaging field due to their potential for classifying neuropsychiatric disorders based on brain patterns. However, the diagnostic predictive power of the existing algorithms has been limited by small sample sizes, lack of representativeness, data leakage, and/or overfitting. Here, w...

Background Accurate assessment of suicide risk is critical for clinical practice, empirical advances, and informing public policy. In this narrative review of the literature, we compiled evidence from longitudinal studies that identify reporting bias of past self-injurious thoughts and behaviors (SITB) and examined possible correlates of inconsiste...

Precision medicine approaches hold tremendous promise to advance current clinical practice by providing information about which individuals will benefit from which treatments. This pilot study evaluated if baseline structure and function of the salience and emotion brain regions implicated in adolescent depression, specifically the amygdala and ant...

Introduction: Native American and multiracial youth experience elevated risk for suicide ideation (SI) and suicide attempts (SA); however, intersectional identities are often unexamined in suicide research. Method: We examined the prevalence of SI and SA, and the impact of intersectional identities (sex, sexual minority identity, and economic in...

One of the most consistent biological findings in the study of affective disorders is that those with depression commonly show abnormal cortisol response, which suggests dysregulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. Children of parents with mood disorders offer the opportunity to explore the biological pathways that may confer ris...

Background Dysregulated stress responsivity is implicated in adolescent risk for depression and self-injurious thoughts and behaviors (STBs). However, studies often examine levels of the stress response in isolation, precluding understanding of how coordinated disturbance across systems confers risk. The current study utilized a novel person-center...

The NOD-, LRR-, and pyrin-domain-containing protein 3 (NLRP3) inflammasome is a node of intracellular stress pathways and a druggable target which integrates mitochondrial stress and inflammatory cascades. While a body of evidence suggests the involvement of the NLRP3 inflammasome in numerous diseases, a lack of reliable measurement techniques high...

Background Suicide is the second-leading cause of death in youth. Understanding the neural correlates of suicide ideation (SI) in children is crucial to ongoing efforts to understand and prevent youth suicide. This study characterized key neural networks during rest and emotion task conditions in an epidemiologically informed sample of children who...

Depression, non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI), and suicidal thoughts and behaviors (STB) often emerge during adolescence. Despite considerable overlap in clinical presentation, risk factors, and implicated neurobiology, there is also evidence for divergence in terms of precursors, correlates, and outcomes. The complex interrelationships amongst these...

Investigation of brain changes in functional connectivity and functional network topology from receiving 8-week selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) treatments is conducted in 12 unmedicated adolescents with major depressive disorder (MDD) by using wavelet-filtered resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Changes are obs...

Objective A major limitation of current suicide research is the lack of power to identify robust correlates of suicidal thoughts or behaviour. Variation in suicide risk assessment instruments used across cohorts may represent a limitation to pooling data in international consortia. Method Here, we examine this issue through two approaches: (i) an e...

Non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) is a common but poorly-understood phenomenon in adolescents. This study examined the Sustained Threat domain in female adolescents with a continuum of NSSI severity (N = 142). Across NSSI lifetime frequency and NSSI severity groups (No+Mild NSSI, Moderate NSSI, Severe NSSI), we examined physiological, self-reported a...

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is associated with an increased risk of brain atrophy, aging-related diseases, and mortality. We examined potential advanced brain aging in adult MDD patients, and whether this process is associated with clinical characteristics in a large multicenter international dataset. We performed a mega-analysis by pooling bra...

Emerging evidence suggests that obesity impacts brain physiology at multiple levels. Here we aimed to clarify the relationship between obesity and brain structure using structural MRI (n = 6420) and genetic data (n = 3907) from the ENIGMA Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) working group. Obesity (BMI > 30) was significantly associated with cortical an...

Nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) is a serious clinical problem, particularly for adolescents and young adults. NSSI is a complex behavior that emerges through the intersecting effects of social, psychological, and biological mechanisms. Although the social and psychological contributions to risk for developing NSSI are relatively well understood and...

Background Well-orchestrated cortisol and DHEA stress responsivity is thought to support efficacious stressor management (i.e., coping) and reduce risk for psychopathology during adolescence. Evidence of these relations, however, is lacking empirically. This longitudinal investigation had three aims: 1) to identify within-adolescent profiles of joi...

Methods In a 2-year longitudinal study of 220 families, we examined how youth gender and adrenocortical and parasympathetic activity moderated reciprocal, bidirectional relations between parent and youth anxiety and depression problems. Results Maternal anxiety predicted subsequent youth anxiety and depression. Maternal depression predicted youth...

The prevalence of non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) is high in adolescents and young adults. However, there is a paucity of evidence-based treatments to address this clinical problem. An open-label, pilot study in the target population showed that treatment with oral N-acetylcysteine (NAC), a widely available dietary supplement, was associated with r...

Motivated by a study on adolescent mental health, we conduct a dynamic connectivity analysis using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data. A dynamic connectivity analysis investigates how the interactions between different regions of the brain, represented by the different dimensions of a multivariate time series, change ov...

Background The COVID-19 pandemic presents a unique context in which to study the impact of protective and risk factors for non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) in adolescents under circumstances of heightened stress. Methods Female participants (N=91, aged 12-16) enrolled in an ongoing study of NSSI completed self-report questionnaires that assessed NS...

Non-suicidal self injury (NSSI) is a transdiagnostic maladaptive behavior that is highly prevalent in adolescence. A greater understanding of the mechanisms leading to NSSI is needed to guide the development of prevention efforts. The current study examined the relationship between maternal socialization of emotions and NSSI behaviors in their chil...

Background: Suicide prevention public service announcements (PSAs) help to disseminate information about suicide and help-seeking options. However, little is known about how individuals at risk for suicide recall PSAs. Aims: The current project assessed which features of suicide prevention PSAs are recalled by young adult participants and whether t...

Depression is associated with abnormalities in Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal (HPA) axis functioning and neural circuitry that underlie the stress response. Resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) captures intrinsic connections between frontolimbic brain regions that may set the stage for the rallying and regulating of the HPA axis system. Thi...

The neurobiology of adolescent depression remains poorly understood. Initial studies suggested impaired white matter microstructure in adults and adolescents, but findings have not been consistent. Challenges in this literature have included small samples, medication confounds and inconsistent correction for type I error. This study addressed these...

Introduction While peer delinquency is a known mediator between early pubertal timing and externalizing behaviors, little is known about factors that could protect against the adverse influence of peer delinquency. This study assesses the possible moderating role of cognitive flexibility, which is one index of executive functioning that facilitates...

Treating adolescent depression effectively requires providing interventions that are optimally suited to patients' individual characteristics and needs. Therefore, we aim to develop an algorithm that matches patients with optimal treatment among cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), fluoxetine (FLX), and combination treatment (COMB). We leveraged dat...

Understanding the association between autonomic nervous system [ANS] function and brain morphology across the lifespan provides important insights into neurovisceral mechanisms underlying health and disease. Resting‐state ANS activity, indexed by measures of heart rate [HR] and its variability [HRV] has been associated with brain morphology, partic...

Treatment-resistant depression (TRD) is a serious problem in adolescents. Development and optimization of novel interventions for these youth will require a deeper knowledge of the neurobiology of depression. A well-established phenomenon of depression is an attention bias toward negativity and away from positivity that is evidenced behaviorally an...

Growing evidence suggests that emotion socialization may be disrupted by maternal depression. However, little is known about emotion-related parenting by mothers with bipolar disorder or whether affective modeling in early childhood is linked to young adults’ recollections of emotion socialization practices. The current study investigates emotion s...

Background Current theory suggests that treatment-resistant depression (TRD) involves impaired neuroplasticity resulting in cognitive and neural rigidity, and that clinical improvement may require increasing brain flexibility and adaptability. Aims In this hypothesis-generating study, we sought to identify preliminary evidence of brain flexibility...

Alterations in white matter (WM) microstructure have been implicated in the pathophysiology of major depressive disorder (MDD). However, previous findings have been inconsistent, partially due to low statistical power and the heterogeneity of depression. In the largest multi-site study to date, we examined WM anisotropy and diffusivity in 1305 MDD...

The human brain is always active; it wanders freely during rest as well as when we lose focus during tasks. Mind-wandering encompasses spontaneous thinking, such as processing recent experiences, problem solving, and achieving insights. Understanding this unconstrained brain activity may lead to clues about the neural mechanisms of mental health pr...

Background Positive symptoms of schizophrenia and its extended phenotype—schizotypy—are characterized by the inclusion of novel, erroneous mental contents. These positive symptoms occur across those with a variety of diagnoses, including schizophrenia, personality disorders, and depression and bipolar with psychotic features. One promising transdia...

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is associated with an increased risk of brain atrophy, aging-related diseases, and mortality. We examined potential advanced brain aging in adult MDD patients, and whether this process is associated with clinical characteristics in a large multicenter international dataset. We performed a mega-analysis by pooling bra...

Background Childhood maltreatment has known impacts on the developing central nervous system, and is associated with adverse behavioral outcomes including suicide in adolescence. Recent work has begun to identify distinct neural correlates of neglect versus abuse experiences. The current project examined how a history of past neglect or abuse exper...

A key objective in the field of translational psychiatry over the past few decades has been to identify the brain correlates of major depressive disorder (MDD). Identifying measurable indicators of brain processes associated with MDD could facilitate the detection of individuals at risk, and the development of novel treatments, the monitoring of tr...

Positive symptoms of schizophrenia and its extended phenotype—often termed Psychoticism or positive schizotypy—are characterized by the inclusion of novel, erroneous mental contents. One promising framework for explaining positive symptoms involves “apophenia,” conceptualized here as a disposition toward false positive errors. Apophenia and positiv...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fpsyt.2019.01019.].