SOCIAL-CONTEXT IN DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOPATHOLOGY - RECOMMENDATIONS FORFUTURE-RESEARCH FROM THE MACARTHUR NETWORK ON PSYCHOPATHOLOGY AND DEVELOPMENT

Accumulating evidence suggests that social contexts in early life have important and complex effects on childhood psychopathology. Spurred b y the lack of an explicit operational definition that could guide the study of such effects, we define a social context operationally as ''a set of interpersonal conditions, relevant to a particular behavior or disorder and external to, but shaped and interpreted by, the individu al child.'' Building on this definition, we offer a series of recommen dations for future research, based on five theoretically derived propo sitions: (a) Contexts are nested and multidimensional; (b) contexts br oaden, differentiate, and deepen with age, becoming more specific in t heir effects; (c) contexts and children are mutually determining; (d) a context's meaning to the child determines its effects on the child a nd arises from the context's ability to provide for fundamental needs; and (e) contexts should be selected for assessment in light of specif ic questions or outcomes. As reflected in an increasingly rich legacy of literature on child development and psychopathology, social context s appear to influence emerging mental disorders through dynamic, bidir ectional interactions with individual children. Future research will b enefit from examining not only statistical interactions between child- and context-specific factors, but also the actual transactions between children and contexts and the transduction of contextual influences i nto pathways of biological mediation. Because adverse contexts exert p owerful effects on the mental health of children, it is important for the field to generate new, more theoretically grounded research addres sing the contextual determinants of psychological well-being and disor der.