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Karen Appleyard Carmody

Associate Professor in Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
Psychiatry, Child & Family Mental Health & Community Psychiatry
Box 102505, Durham, NC 27710
2400 Pratt St, North Pavilion, 6th Floor, #6021, Durham, NC 27705

Selected Publications


Introduction: COVID-19 Related Professional Challenges, Innovations, and Implications for Child Maltreatment Victims.

Journal Article Child Maltreat · August 2024 The current commentary provides an introduction to the special issue examining COVID-19-related professional challenges, innovations, and implications for child maltreatment victims. The editors of the special issue provide a summary of the research presen ... Full text Link to item Cite

Building resilience in families experiencing homelessness through integration of health, parenting and child development programs.

Journal Article Child Care Health Dev · July 2024 Children who experience homelessness are vulnerable to mental health problems, developmental delays and lower academic achievement. Research suggests that parental health literacy, sensitive parenting behaviour and child self-regulation are modifiable mech ... Full text Link to item Cite

Enhancing early parenting in the community: Preliminary results from a learning collaborative approach to scale up Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-up.

Journal Article Infant Ment Health J · November 2023 Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-up (ABC) is a promising home-visiting intervention promoting sensitive caregiving and secure parent-child attachment in families with young children. The goal of this study was to examine a learning collaborative approach ... Full text Link to item Cite

Intergenerational Continuity in Child Maltreatment: Explicating Underlying Mechanisms.

Journal Article J Interpers Violence · January 2022 The current study examined direct and indirect effects of a mother's history of childhood physical and sexual abuse on her child's officially reported victimization. This prospective, longitudinal study followed a community-based sample of 499 mothers and ... Full text Link to item Cite

Disseminating parent-child interaction therapy through the learning collaborative model on the adoption and implementation of an evidence-based treatment

Journal Article Children and Youth Services Review · June 1, 2019 Evidence-based treatments (EBTs) for childhood disruptive behavior disorders, such as Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT), have limited availability in community settings. Recent research highlights the importance of implementation support models to en ... Full text Cite

Can typical US home visits affect infant attachment? Preliminary findings from a randomized trial of Healthy Families Durham.

Journal Article Attach Hum Dev · December 2017 US government-funded early home visiting services are expanding significantly. The most widely implemented home visiting models target at-risk new mothers and their infants. Such home visiting programs typically aim to support infant-parent relationships; ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Maternal Childhood Sexual Trauma and Child Conduct Problems.

Journal Article J Fam Violence · February 2017 This study examines multiple pathways by which maternal childhood sexual trauma may be related to the behavioral development of children. Propensity score matching procedures were used to create matched groups (total N = 204) of mothers who retroactively d ... Full text Link to item Cite

Childhood sexual trauma and subsequent parenting beliefs and behaviors.

Journal Article Child Abuse Negl · June 2015 Using propensity-matched controls, the present study examines the long-term adjustment of women reporting childhood sexual trauma (CST) at or before the age of 14 in terms of parenting efficacy and parenting behavior. Data for these analyses were obtained ... Full text Link to item Cite

Physically Abused Children's Adjustment at the Transition to School: Child, Parent, and Family Factors.

Journal Article J Child Fam Stud · April 2015 Childhood physical abuse predicts emotional/behavioral, self-regulatory, and social problems. Yet factors from multiple ecological levels contribute to children's adjustment. The purpose of this study was to examine the degree to which the social-emotional ... Full text Link to item Cite

Promoting supportive parenting in new mothers with substance-use problems: a pilot randomized trial of residential treatment plus an attachment-based parenting program.

Journal Article Infant Ment Health J · 2014 This pilot randomized trial tested the feasibility and efficacy of supplementing residential substance-abuse treatment for new mothers with a brief, yet rigorous, attachment-based parenting program. Twenty-one predominantly (86%) White mothers and their in ... Full text Link to item Cite

Predictors of treatment completion in a sample of youth who have experienced physical or sexual trauma.

Journal Article J Interpers Violence · January 2014 Despite significant advances in knowledge and availability of evidence-based models for child traumatic stress, many children simply do not complete treatment. There remain notable gaps in the services research literature about treatment completion among y ... Full text Link to item Cite

Resilience in children.

Chapter · March 3, 2013 This volume synthesizes cutting-edge research on natural processes of resilience and recovery, highlighting implications for trauma treatment and prevention. ... Cite

Preventing early child maltreatment: implications from a longitudinal study of maternal abuse history, substance use problems, and offspring victimization.

Journal Article Prev Sci · June 2011 In the interest of improving child maltreatment prevention science, this longitudinal, community based study of 499 mothers and their infants tested the hypothesis that mothers' childhood history of maltreatment would predict maternal substance use problem ... Full text Link to item Cite

Adult Attachment Style and Stress as Risk Factors for Early Maternal Sensitivity and Negativity.

Journal Article Infant Ment Health J · May 1, 2011 The current study examined the individual and joint effects of self-reported adult attachment style, psychological distress, and parenting stress on maternal caregiving behaviors at 6 and 12 months of child age. We proposed a diathesis-stress model to exam ... Full text Link to item Cite

Intergenerational continuity in child maltreatment: mediating mechanisms and implications for prevention.

Journal Article Child Dev · 2011 In the interest of improving child maltreatment prevention, this prospective, longitudinal, community-based study of 499 mothers and their infants examined (a) direct associations between mothers' experiences of childhood maltreatment and their offspring's ... Full text Link to item Cite

Infant Psychosocial Disorders

Journal Article · July 21, 2010 Full text Cite

Delineating the maladaptive pathways of child maltreatment: a mediated moderation analysis of the roles of self-perception and social support.

Journal Article Dev Psychopathol · May 2010 The current study investigated concurrent and longitudinal mediated and mediated moderation pathways among maltreatment, self-perception (i.e., loneliness and self-esteem), social support, and internalizing and externalizing behavior problems. For both gen ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Improving law enforcement and mental health services for child trauma victims in North Carolina

Journal Article Police Chief: Journal of the International Association of Chiefs of Police · 2009 Cite

Direct social support for young high risk children: relations with behavioral and emotional outcomes across time.

Journal Article J Abnorm Child Psychol · June 2007 This study is unique in addressing developmental correlates of direct social support for young children in a high risk sample, in contrast to previous studies addressing social support for caregivers. Participants were drawn from a prospective, longitudina ... Full text Link to item Cite

Supporting healthy relationships between young children and their parents: Lessons from attachment theory

Journal Article Brown University Child and Adolescent Behavior Letter · May 2007 Cite

Mediating links between maternal depression and offspring psychopathology: the importance of independent data.

Journal Article J Child Psychol Psychiatry · May 2005 BACKGROUND: Research examining intergenerational transmission of psychopathology is often limited by reliance on the same individuals for information on multiple constructs of interest. To counteract this limitation, data from a prospective, longitudinal s ... Full text Link to item Cite

When more is not better: the role of cumulative risk in child behavior outcomes.

Journal Article J Child Psychol Psychiatry · March 2005 BACKGROUND: Cumulative risk research has established the deleterious effects of co-occurring risk factors on child behavior outcomes. However, extant literature has not addressed potential differential effects of cumulative risk at different points in deve ... Full text Link to item Cite

Parenting after trauma: Supporting parents and caregivers in the treatment of children impacted by violence

Journal Article Infant Mental Health Journal · December 1, 2003 The deleterious impact of trauma on parents and their capacity to parent their children seems well recognized in the clinical community, although not sufficiently studied empirically. The purposes of this article are to present an overview of current knowl ... Full text Cite