Impacts of Childhood Adversity on Mental Health May Be Delayed for Some Youth, Study Suggests

Children who do not develop mental health problems early in life despite exposure to multiple adversities may experience such challenges in early adulthood, suggests areport inThe American Journal of Psychiatry.“Although resilient individuals may escape their childhood relatively unscathed, the stress of maintaining psychological health despite adversity may catch up with them later in development,” wrote William E. Copeland, Ph.D., of the University of Vermont and colleagues.Copeland and colleagues examined data fromThe Great Smoky Mountains Study, a longitudinal study that tracked the outcomes of three cohorts of children (aged 9, 11, and 13 years), recruited from 11 counties in Western North Carolina. Annual assessments were conducted with the children and caregivers each year until the children reached 16; the young adults were assessed alone at ages 19, 21, 25, and 30. Up until 16, the youth answered questions about childhood adversities, which the researchers categorized into the following five domains:low socioeconomic statusunstable family structurefamily dysfunctionmaltreatmentpeer victimizationThe researchers estimated cumulative childhood exposure to adversity by counting the number of categories of adversity experienced.Copeland and colleagues analyzed the reports of 1,266 participants, who answered questions about psychiatric disorders and functioning at ages 25 and/or 30. Of this group, 941 (74%) experienced psychiatric illnesses or subthreshold psychiatric ...
Source: Psychiatr News - Category: Psychiatry Tags: AJP American Journal of Psychiatry anxiety childhood adversity depression financial health physical health resilience Source Type: research