There is growing evidence that parental trauma is associated with psychosocial disorders, externalizing and internalizing problems, and higher sensitivity to posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in children. Recent research findings suggest multidimensional relational, psychological, and neurobiological interrelated pathways of intergenerational influence. Moreover, the intergenerational effects of parental trauma need to be understood within a broader systemic context, as a part of family adaptation.

Background: Emotional dysregulation is a core feature of borderline personality disorder (BPD). Previous studies have reported that abnormal grey matter volume is associated with the limbic–cortical circuit and default mode network (DMN) in patients with BPD. However, alterations of cortical thickness in adolescents with BPD have not been well evaluated.

Objective: The aim of this study was to assess cortical thickness and its association with emotional dysregulation in adolescents with BPD.

Stressful experiences in armed conflict incur intergenerational effects through parental behaviors with their children. A recent study reported that among Syrian refugee families, mothers’ (but not fathers’) post-traumatic stress (PTS) impacted children’s emotional processing. In this study, we aim to shed further light on this phenomenon by analyzing how the parenting practices in the context of post-traumatic stress confers protection or risk for children’s emotional processing.

The aim of the current dissertation is three-fold. First, we aimed to provide insight with regard to the alterations of traumatized youths’ neurobiological stress systems (PART I). We investigated sympathetic, parasympathetic, and HPA axis parameters among traumatized adolescents in residential care and a nontraumatized comparison sample. Both basal activity during rest and reactivity to acute social stress were evaluated. The outcomes of this study are described in Chapter 2.