# Maternal psychosis and stress as risks for offspring behavioral impairment

> **NIH NIH K23** · BRIGHAM AND WOMEN'S HOSPITAL · 2020 · $54,000

## Abstract

Project Summary/Abstract - Unchanged from parent grant
 This project is designed to improve the lives of women with psychosis and their children, an ”ignored”
population, despite the stress and adversity experienced by these women during the perinatal period, and the
documented biological and psychosocial risks on their children for a wide range of behavioral and cognitive
problems. What is promising are the ways to potentially identify the early signs for these impairments by
studying mothers and offspring as early as pregnancy. This K-award application aims to prepare Dr. Cindy Liu
to become an independent clinical researcher and to develop expertise in many of the issues that face women
with psychosis and their families; specifically, expertise in the consequences of maternal stress experiences
and the ability to ultimately develop interventions that ameliorate stress and its derailing consequences for
children. To accomplish this, the proposed research strategy bridges two highly relevant areas within the field:
familiar high-risk (HR) research in psychosis and biologically based early stress models from developmental
science through complementary two studies. Through Study 1, a secondary data analysis of a large
longitudinal birth cohort dataset, early biological and environmental risks and early behavioral impairments
from birth to age 7 years will be identified in offspring of parents with psychosis (n=208) and in matched
controls (n=132). In Study 2, Dr. Liu will identify behavioral and physiological markers of adverse outcomes in
a new sample of children and their mothers with psychosis (n=25), and matched comparison groups, mothers
with non-psychotic mood disorders (n=25), and control mothers without psychiatric disorders (n=25) through
primary data collection, by assessing behavioral and physiological responses in mothers and children from
pregnancy until 4 months postpartum. These two studies provide the opportunity to investigate prenatal stress
across different time frames and to utilize developmentally appropriate biological and behavioral measures of
stress with this population. Doing so may answer questions about the mechanisms leading to developmental
impairments in these high-risk children and will prepare Dr. Liu to develop a R01 proposal that informs how
perinatal stress experiences affect socio-emotional development in high-risk children at 4 years of age.
 In summary, the training plan to be implemented will support Dr. Liu's transition to independence. The two
studies will provide a range of unique macro to micro skill development that targets the role of stress on
behavioral and physiological reactivity in high-risk children at specific developmental time points. Moreover, the
project focus of assessing longitudinal trajectories for risk through a biological and behavioral model of early
stress advances the NIMH priority for developmental translational research. It is poised to make a meaningful
contribution toward unders...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10209406
- **Project number:** 3K23MH107714-04S1
- **Recipient organization:** BRIGHAM AND WOMEN'S HOSPITAL
- **Principal Investigator:** CINDY H LIU
- **Activity code:** K23 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $54,000
- **Award type:** 3
- **Project period:** 2016-08-04 → 2021-07-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10209406

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10209406, Maternal psychosis and stress as risks for offspring behavioral impairment (3K23MH107714-04S1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-25 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10209406. Licensed CC0.

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