The role of early adversity and cognitive vulnerability in postnatal stress and depression

The purpose of the present study was to examine vulnerability factors in expecting parents that might lead to mental illness in the perinatal period. Specifically, we studied how parental early adversity, attentional bias to infant faces, repetitive negative thinking, and demographic factors, were associated with pre- and postnatal depressive symptoms and parenting stress. Participants were expecting parents taking part in the Northern Babies Longitudinal Study, where assessments were made both pre- and postnatally. Assessments included both questionnaires and cognitive tasks. About half of the participants received the Newborn Behavior Observation (NBO)-intervention after birth, between pre- and postnatal assessments. Results show that repetitive negative thinking was a significant predictor of both depressive symptoms and parenting stress, while education, social support, and parity came out as protective factors, especially in mothers. Parental early adversity had an indirect effect on postnatal depressive symptoms and parenting stress, mediated by prenatal and postnatal depressive symptoms, respectively. The NBO intervention did not affect the results, signifying the importance of early childhood adverse events and negative thinking on parents' postnatal adjustment and mood, even when an intervention is provided. In conclusion, repetitive negative thinking is a significant vulnerability factor independent of the presence of depressive symptoms, and health professionals must be aware of parents’ thinking style both during pregnancy and after birth.

Early Adversity and Later Health: The Pathway of Social Relationships in Adulthood in HRS and ELSA

Early adversity is associated with compromised health and well-being in later life, but whether social functioning mediate the association is unclear. We examined 2 longitudinal samples of older adults (>= 50 years) whose baseline surveys were between 2006 and 2008 with follow-up until 2016 in the Health and Retirement Study (HRS, n = 15,946) and its sister study in England (ELSA, n = 9,692). Health outcomes included depressive symptoms, chronic health conditions, and subjective memory complaints. Social relationships were measured by contacts, relationship strains, and feelings of loneliness. Early adversity was measured by parental physical abuse and alcohol and drug problems in the family before the age of 16. Patterns of association were similar in these 2 samples, where social contacts decreased over time, while relationship strains and loneliness increased especially for older adults with early trauma, which in turn mediated the associations between early adversity and poorer later health.

School connectedness as a protective factor against childhood exposure to violence and social deprivation: A longitudinal study of adaptive and maladaptive outcomes

School connectedness, a construct indexing supportive school relationships, has been posited to promote resilience to environmental adversity. Consistent with prominent calls in the field, we examined the protective nature of school connectedness against two dimensions of early adversity that index multiple levels of environmental exposure (violence exposure, social deprivation) when predicting both positive and negative outcomes in longitudinal data from 3,246 youth in the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (48% female, 49% African American). Child and adolescent school connectedness were promotive, even when accounting for the detrimental effects of early adversity. Additionally, childhood school connectedness had a protective but reactive association with social deprivation, but not violence exposure, when predicting externalizing symptoms and positive function. Specifically, school connectedness was protective against the negative effects of social deprivation, but the effect diminished as social deprivation became more extreme. These results suggest that social relationships at school may compensate for low levels of social support in the home and neighborhood. Our results highlight the important role that the school environment can play for youth who have been exposed to adversity in other areas of their lives and suggest specific groups that may especially benefit from interventions that boost school connectedness.

Early adversity and depressive symptoms among early adolescent girls: the mediating role of exposure to recent interpersonal acute stress

Early adversity confers risk for depression in part through its association with recent (i.e., proximal) acute stress. However, it remains unresolved whether: a) early adversity predicts increases in recent acute stress over time; b) all – or only certain types – of recent events mediate the relationship between early adversity and depression; and c) early adversity places individuals at greater risk for depression via greater exposure to independent (i.e., fateful) interpersonal events or via greater generation of dependent (i.e., partially self-initiated) interpersonal events (i.e., stress generation) or both. These questions were examined in a 3-wave longitudinal study of early adolescent girls (N = 125; M = 12.35 years [SD = .77]) with no history of diagnosable depression using contextual life stress and diagnostic interviews. Path analyses indicated that increases in past-year acute interpersonal, but not non-interpersonal, stress mediated the link between early adversity and depressive symptoms. The mediating role of interpersonal events was limited to independent ones, suggesting increases in interpersonal event exposure, not interpersonal stress generation, acted as a mediator. Finally, findings support prior evidence that early adversity may not directly predict future depressive symptoms. Implications for understanding the role of recent stress in the association between early adversity and adolescent depression are discussed.

Measuring Early Life Adversity across the Lifespan

Exposure to adversity in childhood is associated with elevations in numerous physical and mental health outcomes across the life-course. The biological embedding of early experience during periods of developmental plasticity is one pathway that contributes to these associations. While a rich literature documents associations between early adversity and key outcomes in childhood and early adulthood, little research investigates the impact of adversity on processes of health and wellbeing in later life. This lack of research impairs progress as the strong theoretical prediction of early embedding models is that the impact of early adversity will be observed throughout the lifespan, even into late life. Recently articulated dimensional models (e.g., McLaughlin et al., 2021) specify mechanistic pathways linking different dimensions of adversity to health and wellbeing outcomes later in life. While findings from existing studies testing these dimensions have provided promising preliminary support for these models, less agreement exists about how to measure the experiences that comprise each dimension. Here we review existing approaches to measuring two dimensions of adversity: threat and deprivation. We recommend specific measures for measuring these constructs and, when possible, document when the same measure can be used by different reporters and across the lifespan to maximize the utility with which these recommendations can be applied. Through this approach we hope to stimulate progress in understanding how particular dimensions of early adversity exposure contribute to outcomes in late life.