Socio-cognitive and biological responses to maltreatment

We will test whether a history of emotional childhood maltreatment (CM) is associated with various aspects of psychological (social behaviour, empathy) and biological (brain function and structure, inflammation) health. CM is a risk factor for many mental disorders, such as schizophrenia and autism. However, it is unclear how emotional CM affects psychological and biological outcomes in bipolar disorder (BD). We will consider how a possible history of CM affects BD by comparing BD patients to control participants (CP) with no known psychiatric illness. We will recruit 80 CP and 80 people diagnosed with BD, some of whom will have a history of CM. We will assess psychological well-being (social behaviour, empathy) at two points in time at the Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy, Psychosomatics and Medical Psychology at the Medical University of Innsbruck (MUI). To understand how emotional CM affects brain function and structure, we will perform magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the brain at the Neuroimaging Core Facility (MUI). We will measure biological markers in the blood (such as telomere length, inflammation) in collaboration with the Department of Psychology (Leopold-Franzens University of Innsbruck) to see whether they are affected in BD. Finally, we will look at a combination of the psychological and biological tests to see if there is a link between emotional CM and health outcomes. The results should help to provide more personalised therapy (i.e. trauma, emotional or empathy-focused treatments) and medicine to improve outcomes.