Norman Garmezy - US grants

There are two directions to PI's current research program. One focus of the Project Competence research group has been on studies of children who were at risk for the later development of psychopathology. In 1979-1980 these studies neared completion (although more extensive data analyses are still being conducted), accompanied by a growing awareness of the normalizing behavior patterns exhibited by many of the biological offspring of mothers previously diagnosed as schizophrenic or depressive. In this portion of the research program other groups studied have included externalizing, internalizing, and hyperactive children, together with classroom controls matched with the index children for social competence as rated by peers. In these studies the focus has been primarily on measures of competence in relation to group membership and attentional functioning. In the past two years our research efforts have been directed to the study of three cohorts of children exposed to different types of stressful experience and their levels of functional competence. The defining stressor characteristics of the cohorts are these: 1) a central-city community-based cohort of families many of which are under severe economic distress; 2) a group of children born with a life-threatening congenital heart defect who have had successful surgical intervention; 3) severely physically handicapped children who have been placed in classrooms of non-handicapped children as part of a school mainstreaming program. Although the research activities specific to each group have differed somewhat, the emphasis, in general, has been on analysis of children's adaptation competencies in relation to stress indicators in the hope of furthering an understanding of the risk and protective factors that are reflected in such relationships.

The long-term objective of the current grant application is a systematic study of children representing a wide range of competence and exposure to a variety of stressful family experiences. Our goal is to undue partially the current neglect of the stress-resistant child, who we have defined as one who maintains mastery and competence under adverse, stressful circumstances. Specific aims of the projected program are, first, to integrate complex and diverse data sets documenting personal attributes and experiences collected on children and parents in two very different cohorts: a community-based, central city group of 200 children and their parents, and a smaller cohort of severely physically handicapped children who had been initially mainstreamed in regular classrooms at the time they were studied by the research team. A second objective of the projected research is to conduct a short-term and selective followup study of the children and their parents to evaluate the stability of the children's adaptation and the patterns of stress to which the participating families had been exposed during the intervening period of some three years since the last research contact. The health-related significance of this research program rests in part on the fact that research efforts and support have more typically focused on understanding maladaptation and incompetence. By contrast, the study of qualities of stress-resistance in children has remained an area of puzzling neglect. Knowledge of those factors--(individual, familial, environmental) that foster good adaptation under stress would help inform mental health specialists, not only about risk exposure, but about factors that serve a "protective" function against potentially debilitating experiences and circumstances. Such knowledge would foreshadow process-oriented intervention strategies with at risk persons, and provide an empirical and rational base for primary prevention research with potentially deviant individuals. It may also point to ways of stabilizing supportive adaptive trends in persons exposed to stressful circumstances.

The focus of this research has been the identification of personal and environmental characteristics associated with competence and resilience under a variety of facilitative and disadvantaging circumstances. Such knowledge is fundamental to a basic science of mental health and developmental psychopathology. The purpose of the research is to conduct a follow-up study (T2) of a core sample of young people, ages 16-20, who originally participated in an extensive set of procedures when they were in elementary school (T1). Over 92% of the sample of 205 children have been located; 87% have responded positively to initial contacts. The central objectives of this final follow-up stage are: a) to identify patterns and correlates of continuity and discontinuity in competence, resilience, and maladjustment over time, b) to evaluate the predictive validity of risk and protective factors suggested by T1; and c) to conduct causal analyses of the relations at two points in time among the attributes of competence, maladjustment, cognitive and social abilities, and environmental/familial advantages and risk factors. To meet these objectives, data would be collected on the children's outcome (at T2) both with regard to competence and maladjustment, and a carefully selected set of personal and environmental assets most relevant for linking earlier to later adaptive status. The young people would complete questionnaires on perceived competence, life events, current status, and activities, a behavior checklist, a personality scale, cumulative school records, laboratory assessments of IQ and social comprehension, and a single interview designed to complete and qualitatively supplement the other data. Mothers would be interviewed about the status of their children, complete parallel questionnaires on their children's competence, status, behavior, and life events, and be given an IQ test.