Authors:
Tearne JE, Allen KL, Herbison CE, Lawrence D, Whitehouse AJO, Sawyer MG, Robinson M
Authors notes:
Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. 2014;Online:1-10
Keywords:
Behaviour, Longitudinal cohort study, Mental health, Raine Study, Trajectories
Abstract:
The prenatal period is recognised as a critical period for later behavioural development.
This study aimed to elucidate how an adverse prenatal environment, as defined by the presence of a number of known prenatal risk factors, would influence mental health trajectories in children to 14 years of age.
In the final multivariate models, increased offspring CBCL T scores were significantly predicted by the mother not finishing high school, smoking during pregnancy, having a total family income below the poverty line, being diagnosed with gestational hypertension and experiencing stressful life events during pregnancy.
Conversely, as maternal age increased, CBCL T scores were significantly decreased.
Child age also significantly interacted with maternal education, total family income, and maternal stressful life events, such that these variables predicted increases in CBCL scores from age 2 to age 10, and from age 2 to age 14 years.
In the Raine Study sample, children who experienced adverse prenatal environments experienced increased levels of problem behaviours in childhood, and more problematic mental health trajectories.
Maternal health risk behaviours and other psychosocial variables more commonly affected child behaviour than obstetric complications.