Caroline Ostiguy receives dissertation prize
Caroline Ostiguy, a PhD graduate in psychology, is this year's recipient of the Concordia University Distinguished Doctoral Dissertation Prize in Fine Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences.
This is one of two doctoral thesis prizes established by the Council of the School of Graduate Studies, in consideration of the increased number of graduate students and programs at Concordia. The prize includes a $2,000 award and a certificate.
A clinical psychologist, Ostiguy focused her thesis on children born to parents who suffer from bipolar disorder.
“Bipolar disorders affect two per cent of the population,” she says. “They’re characterized by periods of low, depressed moods which can last weeks to months, and periods of euphoria and grandiosity, which can also last weeks to months. So you can imagine these disorders greatly affect the functioning of not only an individual but the people around him or her.
“Previous research has shown that parents who suffer from a bipolar disorder tend to create a very unstructured family environment,” she adds. “So we were interested in looking at how a bipolar disorder in parents affects their children.”
According to Ostiguy, these children are four times more likely to develop a mood disorder than children whose parents do not have a bipolar disorder.
“The risk comes from both genetics and the environment,” Ostiguy explains. “What we found is that from a young age the children of parents with a bipolar disorder tend to have more problem behaviours, which over time lead to these children having more interpersonal stressors – problems with their peers, parents, and colleagues – and we know from research that these interpersonal stressors are a risk factor for mood disorders in the future.”
Ostiguy says her second study found that children of parents with a bipolar disorder show a greater increase in the hormone cortisol in response to interpersonal stressors, compared to children whose parents don’t have the disorder, which suggests these children are biologically more sensitive to the experience of stress in their environment.
“Our take-home message was that we think we’re starting to understand where we can intervene to prevent both problem behaviours and increased stress sensitivity from developing, and thus reduce the risk for mood disorders in the future,” Ostiguy says.
Ostiguy received her award at this year’s Faculty of Arts and Science convocation ceremony on June 18.
She says the award is a welcomed surprise. “We all worked so hard and were so passionate about our projects,” she says of herself and other recent PhD candidates in Concordia’s Department of Psychology, “but it’s very humbling actually, because I was surrounded by so many passionate and smart people throughout Concordia.”
Related Links:
• Doctoral Dissertation Prizes
• School of Graduate Studies
• Centre for Research in Human Development
• Concordia’s Department of Psychology