Rachel H. Salk

Sexual and gender minority (SGM) adolescents have high risk for suicidal behavior (SB), and structural homophobia could contribute to inequities in suicidal ideation and behavior among SGM youth. Limited prior research has examined how comprehensive indicators of structural homophobia are related to suicidal ideation and behavior among SGM adolesce...

Gender minority (GM) youth are at heightened risk for psychopathology, purportedly due to their experiences of GM stressors. However, few studies have examined how GM stressors are associated with depression and anxiety among GM youth. Furthermore, no prior studies have investigated how experiences of GM stressors differ across gender identity and...

Measurement-based care has demonstrable benefits, but significant implementation barriers slow dissemination in real-world clinical settings, especially youth behavioral health care. Here, we describe use of measurement-based care in a specialty clinic offering a continuum of outpatient care for suicidal youth. We characterize strategies used to fa...

Purpose: Transgender adolescents (TGAs) have high risk for experiencing mental health problems, but little is known about how aspects of gender identity relate to their mental health symptoms. Evidence from child and adult samples of transgender individuals indicates making progress in gender transition milestones and higher levels of congruence b...

Youths who are negatively affected by social determinants of health suffer adverse effects like increased risks of chronic health conditions and mental health issues. Part 2 of this series describes the adverse effects social determinants of health can have on vulnerable children around the world. Available for purchase at https://shop.aap.org/pedi...

The present study examined whether body esteem mediates the associations between psychosocial factors, including peer victimization and parent–adolescent relationship quality, and multiple categories of disordered eating (DE) within a diverse sample of adolescent sexual minority (SM) girls. Participants were 528 girls, aged 14–18 years, recruited a...

Background and objectives: Transgender adolescents (TGAs) exhibit disproportionate levels of mental health problems compared with cisgender adolescents (CGAs), but psychosocial processes underlying mental health disparities among TGAs remain understudied. We examined self-reported childhood abuse among TGAs compared with CGAs and risk for abuse wi...

Transgender adolescents (TGAs) face many of the same sociocultural and biological influences on body dissatisfaction and disordered eating as cisgender peers. Additionally, TGAs experience unique body- and gender-related concerns. The purpose of this study is to explore the nuances of gender identity, gender transitioning, body image, and disordere...

Objective College counseling centers (CCCs) have limited capacity to accommodate high-risk students who need more intensive care than traditional outpatient treatment. We describe an Intensive Outpatient Program (IOP) to meet the specialized needs of suicidal undergraduates. Participants: Suicidal undergraduates aged 18–24. Methods: Fact-gathering...

Objective: Adolescence is a developmental period of increased risk for disordered eating. Gender minority adolescents (GMAs), or those whose gender identity does not align with their sex assigned at birth, may experience body image concerns related to unique gender-related stressors. GMAs may use disordered eating to affirm a feminine, masculine, o...

The health of transgender adolescents (i.e., those identifying with a gender other than their sex assigned at birth) is gaining attention from researchers, yet little work has examined normative sexual behaviors among this population. Self-identified gender minority adolescents, including those identifying as trans boys, trans girls, nonbinary, and...

Recent research has documented significant mental health disparities for transgender adolescents. However, the extant literature is hindered by vague operationalizations of gender identity and limited measurement of trans-specific stressors. In this article, we (1) introduce and describe the Gender Minority Youth (GMY) Study, a large-scale study of...

Study objectives: Stigmatized youth experience poorer sleep than those who have not experienced stigma. However, no studies have examined the sleep of gender minority adolescents (GMAs). Examining sleep disparities between GMAs and non-gender minority adolescents (non-GMAs) is critical, since poor sleep is associated with mental health outcomes ex...

Introduction Sleep problems are germane to the majority of adolescents, but stigmatized youth may experience poorer sleep than those who have not experienced stigma. However, no prior studies have examined sleep among transgender adolescents (TGAs). Investigating these sleep disparities is critical, since low sleep duration and poor sleep quality a...

Objective: Sexual and gender minority (SGM) adolescents report elevated risk for psychopathology. Identifying as a racial/ethnic minority and sexual minority (SM) or gender minority (GM) may lead to greater stress/discrimination and psychopathology. We examined nonsuicidal self-injury, suicide ideation, and suicide attempts (i.e., self-injurious t...

Young adults with chronic mood and anxiety disorders may receive a range of services in pediatric care (eg, psychiatry, therapy) and within the school system (eg, individualized education plans). Such services rely on the involvement of parents or guardians to support youth (eg, attending appointments, administering medications). However, in colleg...

Background and objectives: Emerging evidence indicates transgender adolescents (TGAs) exhibit elevated rates of suicidal ideation and attempt compared with cisgender adolescents (CGAs). Less is known about risk among subgroups of TGAs because of limited measures of gender identity in previous studies. We examined disparities in suicidality across...

Objectives: Examine how relationship quality in family and peer domains are associated with suicidal ideation (SI) in youth with Bipolar Disorder (BP). Methods: 404 Course and Outcome of Bipolar Youth study participants were assessed for psychiatric disorders and SI at intake, and family/peer relationships the month after intake. Multivariate logis...

Background: Depressive symptoms are prevalent during pregnancy and the postpartum period and affect risk for smoking relapse. Whether and how depression affects response to postpartum interventions designed to sustain smoking abstinence is unknown. Purpose: We examined end-of-pregnancy depressive symptoms as a moderator of response to two postpa...

Objective: Smoking and overweight or obesity are preventable causes of disease and death. Women are reluctant to quit smoking because of concerns about postcessation weight gain, underscoring the need to elucidate patterns of weight concerns and associated psychosocial factors that may affect smoking cessation outcomes. The present study aimed to...

Pre-pregnancy overweight/obesity and excessive gestational weight gain (GWG) independently predict negative maternal and child health outcomes. To date, however, interventions that target GWG have not produced lasting improvements in maternal weight or health at 12-months postpartum. Given that interventions solely aimed at addressing GWG may not e...

Negative body talk measures have been developed with predominantly White, female samples. We tested measurement invariance (equivalence) of two available negative body talk scales for Asian, Latina(o), and White college women and men in the U.S. In Study 1 (n = 1501 women; n = 1436 men), multiple group confirmatory factor analyses indicated scalar...

Limited research has examined the factors related to knowledge of gestational weight gain (GWG) recommendations and the receipt of advice from healthcare providers regarding GWG recommendations among women with pre-pregnancy overweight/obesity. Women with pre-pregnancy overweight/obesity (N = 191) reported the amount of gestational weight they beli...

In 2 meta-analyses on gender differences in depression in nationally representative samples, we advance previous work by including studies of depression diagnoses and symptoms to (a) estimate the magnitude of the gender difference in depression across a wide array of nations and ages; (b) use a developmental perspective to elucidate patterns of gen...

Objective: The purpose of this study was to test the concurrent and predictive validity of dietary-negative affect subtypes among patients with anorexia nervosa (AN; N = 194). Method: Latent profile analysis was used to identify subtypes of AN based on dimensions of dietary restraint and negative affect. Chi-square and multivariate analysis of v...

Background: We probe the adolescent gender difference in depression, asking two critical questions. First, most longitudinal studies of gender differences in adolescent depression date from the 1980s and 1990s, raising the need for a body of evidence on whether the developmental pattern is similar or different today. Second, despite the importance...

Background: Psychological stress has long been recognized as a contributing factor to asthma symptom expression and disease progression. Yet, the neural mechanisms that underlie this relationship have been largely unexplored in research addressing the pathophysiology and management of asthma. Studies that have examined the mechanisms of this relat...

It is well known that stressful life events can play a role in the development of adolescent depressive symptoms; however, there has been little research on romantic stress specifically. The relationship between romantic stress and depressive symptoms is particularly salient in adolescence, as adolescence often involves the onset of dating. This an...

Fat talk, conversations in which women disparage the size/shape of their bodies, acts as both a reflection of and contributor to body dissatisfaction. We assessed the impact of age, body mass index, and ethnicity on fat talk in two large, online surveys of adult women. Body mass index showed a small, positive correlation with fat talk, but only for...

We applaud Wood, Kressel, Joshi, and Louie's (2014) careful, nuanced meta-analysis. The evolutionary hypotheses designed to explain menstrual cycle fluctuations in mate preferences are convoluted and, based on this new meta-analysis, unnecessary because the existence of the fluctuations is not supported by the data. Evolutionary explanations are st...

Heterogeneity in the longitudinal course of depressive symptoms was examined using latent growth mixture modeling among a community sample of 382 U.S. youth from ages 11 to 18 (52.1 % female). Three latent trajectory classes were identified: Stable Low (51 %; displayed low depressive symptoms at all assessments), Increasing (37 %; reported low depr...

Rumination is an established cognitive vulnerability for depression. Despite substantial work on the environmental origins of rumination, the heritability of rumination has not been examined and it is not known whether rumination accounts for some of the genetic vulnerability associated with depression. 756 adolescent twins ages 12-14 years complet...

Over the past century, much of genetics was deterministic, and feminist researchers framed justified criticisms of genetics research. However, over the past two decades, genetics research has evolved remarkably and has moved far from earlier deterministic approaches. Our article provides a brief primer on modern genetics, emphasizing contemporary e...

Our article details the development of the self-report Negative Body Talk (NBT) scale and five studies (all conducted with samples of U.S. undergraduate women) supporting the psychometric soundness of scores on this measure. The NBT scale measures women’s tendency to engage in negatively valenced commentary about the weight and shape of their own b...

Fat talk is a social phenomenon during which women speak negatively with each other about the size/shape of their bodies (Nichter and Vuckovich 1994). In this study, exposure to fat talk from peers was experimentally manipulated to determine the effect of hearing fat talk on a woman’s own likelihood of engaging in fat talk and on state body dissati...

Fat talk (women speaking negatively about the size and shape of their bodies) is a phenomenon that both reflects and creates body dissatisfaction. Our study investigated the content, frequency, and impact of fat talk among college women. Participants (168 female students at a Midwestern U.S. university) completed online surveys containing fat talk-...