Maternal mental-health treatment moderates the association between psychological distress and harsh parenting: A prospective cohort study

Emily Midouhas; Bonamy R. Oliver

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0282108

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionAugust 1, 2022
25 Jan 2023 Decision Letter - Giulia Ballarotto, Editor PONE-D-22-21569Maternal mental-health treatment moderates the association between psychological distress and harsh parenting: A prospective cohort studyPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Midouhas, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. ============================== ACADEMIC EDITOR: Thank you for considering PLOS ONE for your paper. I read your study with interest, and based on the reviewers' reports, minor revisions are suggested Please submit your revised manuscript by Mar 11 2023 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. 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The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf 2. Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice. Additional Editor Comments (if provided): Thank you for considering PLOS ONE for your paper. I read your study with interest, and based on the reviewers' reports, minor revisions are suggested [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 5. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: This is an interesting study addressing an important issue. The manuscript is clear to read and presents some strenghts as the sample size and the longitudinal nature. I have only some minor comments: -I suggest to insert in the limits that other relevant variables, as affect regulation capabilities, should be explored in future studies since may have a role as confounder. -the study has a longitudinal nature with several waves, probabli a flow-chart woul be usefull. Minor:in acknolegment section the first sentence regards more authors but I think there is only an author in this manuscript. Reviewer #2: Thank you very much for the possibility to review the study “Maternal mental-health treatment moderates the association between psychological distress and harsh parenting: A prospective cohort study”. The study aimed to examine the moderating role of mothers receiving treatment for depression or anxiety on the longitudinal relationship between maternal psychological distress and the development of harsh parenting across early childhood. This longitudinal study is very interesting and well written. I suggest only a few minor revisions: 1) as much as the authors have included that one of the limitations is the absence of data on fathers, I think it may be important that the paternal role is nevertheless also considered in the introduction to the work. Several studies have investigated the role of fathers and especially the mother-child and father-child interactive quality, so it would be important to be able to explore this literature more, then highlight the specific focus of the paper on mothers. For example, there are several recent studies: - Cabrera, N. J., Volling, B. L., & Barr, R. (2018). Fathers are parents, too! Widening the lens on parenting for children's development. Child Development Perspectives, 12(3), 152-157. - Barker, B., Iles, J. E., & Ramchandani, P. G. (2017). Fathers, fathering and child psychopathology. Current opinion in psychology, 15, 87-92. - Cimino, S., Cerniglia, L., Tambelli, R., Ballarotto, G., Erriu, M., Paciello, M., ... & Koren-Karie, N. (2020). Dialogues about emotional events between mothers with anxiety, depression, anorexia nervosa, and no diagnosis and their children. Parenting, 20(1), 69-82. 2) it would be useful to include a figure to represent the different waves of the longitudinal study. 3) Lastly, it is suggested that the clinical implications of the study's findings should be more fully explored ****** 6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #1: No Reviewer #2: No ******** [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0282108.r001
Revision 1
7 Feb 2023 Author Response We thank you as Academic Editor and the reviewers for the opportunity to revise our manuscript, ‘Maternal mental-health treatment moderates associations between psychological distress and harsh parenting: evidence from a UK population sample across childhood’ (PONE-D-22-21569) for publication in PLOS ONE. We very much appreciate acknowledgements of the study strengths and for comments that we have found to be constructive and helpful for improving the paper. Below, we detail our responses, point-by-point and highlight where changes are made to the manuscript for ease of reference. We should also note that we have added a middle initial for the second author which we missed in our submitted manuscript. Academic Editor Thank you for considering PLOS ONE for your paper. I read your study with interest, and based on the reviewers' reports, minor revisions are suggested. Response: Thank you for your encouragement of our work! Reviewer 1: Comment: This is an interesting study addressing an important issue. The manuscript is clear to read and presents some strenghts as the sample size and the longitudinal nature. Response: Thank you! Comment: I suggest to insert in the limits that other relevant variables, as affect regulation capabilities, should be explored in future studies since may have a role as confounder. Response: Thank you for this important point. This is now included in limitations: Another avenue we suggest for future research, beyond the scope of the current study, is to consider key relevant confounding variables such as emotion regulation. Comment: the study has a longitudinal nature with several waves, probably a flow-chart would be useful. Response: Thank you, we hadn’t considered a flowchart, but it’s a good idea! This is now included in the Method section. Comment: Minor:in acknowledgment section the first sentence regards more authors but I think there is only an author in this manuscript. Response: There are two authors of this paper which is why we use ‘authors’ rather than ‘author’. Reviewer 2: Thank you very much for the possibility to review the study “Maternal mental-health treatment moderates the association between psychological distress and harsh parenting: A prospective cohort study”. The study aimed to examine the moderating role of mothers receiving treatment for depression or anxiety on the longitudinal relationship between maternal psychological distress and the development of harsh parenting across early childhood. This longitudinal study is very interesting and well written. Response: Thank you for your kind review. Comment: 1) as much as the authors have included that one of the limitations is the absence of data on fathers, I think it may be important that the paternal role is nevertheless also considered in the introduction to the work. Several studies have investigated the role of fathers and especially the mother-child and father-child interactive quality, so it would be important to be able to explore this literature more, then highlight the specific focus of the paper on mothers. For example, there are several recent studies: - Cabrera, N. J., Volling, B. L., & Barr, R. (2018). Fathers are parents, too! Widening the lens on parenting for children's development. Child Development Perspectives, 12(3), 152-157. - Barker, B., Iles, J. E., & Ramchandani, P. G. (2017). Fathers, fathering and child psychopathology. Current opinion in psychology, 15, 87-92. - Cimino, S., Cerniglia, L., Tambelli, R., Ballarotto, G., Erriu, M., Paciello, M., ... & Koren-Karie, N. (2020). Dialogues about emotional events between mothers with anxiety, depression, anorexia nervosa, and no diagnosis and their children. Parenting, 20(1), 69-82. Response: Thank you – this is an excellent point. Although we acknowledged this as a limitation in our Discussion, it is indeed important to discuss fathers earlier in the paper. We now include points about fathers in the introduction to provide this background (citing the above papers) and go on to explain at the end of the introduction why we focused on mothers in this analysis. Comment: 2) it would be useful to include a figure to represent the different waves of the longitudinal study. Response: Thank you. As mentioned above, we now include this in the Method section. Comment: 3) Lastly, it is suggested that the clinical implications of the study's findings should be more fully explored. Response: We have now extended our discussion of implications to cover clinical implications (see final paragraph of Discussion). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0282108.r002
8 Feb 2023 Decision Letter - Giulia Ballarotto, Editor Maternal mental-health treatment moderates the association between psychological distress and harsh parenting: A prospective cohort study PONE-D-22-21569R1 Dear Dr. Midouhas, We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements. Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication. An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org. Kind regards, Giulia Ballarotto Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0282108.r003
Formally Accepted
14 Feb 2023 Acceptance Letter - Giulia Ballarotto, Editor PONE-D-22-21569R1 Maternal mental-health treatment moderates the association between psychological distress and harsh parenting: A prospective cohort study Dear Dr. Midouhas: I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org. If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Dr Giulia Ballarotto Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0282108.r004

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