Skip to main content

MINI REVIEW article

Front. Psychiatry

Sec. Psychological Therapy and Psychosomatics

Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1548601

EARLY MALADAPTIVE SCHEMAS FROM CHILD MALTREATMENT IN DEPRESSION AND PSYCHOTHERAPEUTIC REMEDIATION: A PREDICTIVE CODING FRAMEWORK

Provisionally accepted
  • 1 Upstate Medical University, Syracuse, United States
  • 2 Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Figure 1: The self-sustaining feedback loops underlying depression. CM exacerbates all the elements driving the loops. In one loop, psychological sequalae of CM, including shame, maladaptive shame-coping, mentalization difficulties, social withdrawal and amotivation, all impair socio-occupational function (1-6). In turn, repeated socio-occupational disappointments can confirm EMS of Defectiveness/Shame and Social Isolation/Alienation, reinforcing their certainty and resistance to schema-incongruent information (7, 8). In another interlocked recursive loop, CM sequalae diminish exposure to and learning from reward prediction errors, which could have revised depressogenic EMS: For example, avoidant coping decreases social/occupational engagement, thus reducing opportunities for reward prediction errors. When rewarding experiences do arise, their impact is decreased by biological sequalae of CM: Amygdala hyperactivity, HPA axis dysfunction and inflammation promote preferential learning of negative information (9-13), through attenuated reward prediction error, negative overgeneralized memory and negative memory/attention biases Socio-occupational stress further exacerbates the biological sequalae (14-16), completing the loop.

    Keywords: Early maladaptive schemas (EMS), Depression, predictive coding, Child maltreatment (CM), Psychotherapy

    Received: 19 Dec 2024; Accepted: 25 Mar 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Ramamurthy and Chen. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Gita Ramamurthy, Upstate Medical University, Syracuse, United States

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

    Research integrity at Frontiers

    Man ultramarathon runner in the mountains he trains at sunset

    95% of researchers rate our articles as excellent or good

    Learn more about the work of our research integrity team to safeguard the quality of each article we publish.


    Find out more