Early adversity and psychiatric symptoms – a prospective study on Ethiopian mothers and their children
Abstract
Background
Maternal exposure to adversity during the perinatal period has been associated with increased susceptibility for psychiatric symptoms in the offspring. The aim of this study was to investigate a possible developmental effect of maternal perinatal stressors on emotional and behavioural symptoms in the offspring in a developing country.
Methods
We followed an Ethiopian birth cohort (N = 358), assessing intimate partner violence (IPV) and maternal psychiatric symptoms during the perinatal period and at follow-up 10 years later, as a proxy for adversity, and maternal ratings on the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) 10 years later as the outcome.
Results
Among the women, exposure to IPV was common (60.6%) during the perinatal period and predicted IPV (29.9% of the mothers) at follow-up (ρ = 0.132; p = 0.012). There was also an association between maternal psychiatric symptoms at the two time points (ρ = 0.136; p = 0.010) and between maternal symptoms and IPV. Current maternal symptoms of anxiety and depression (β = 0.057; p < 0.001), but not during the perinatal period, were associated with child CBCL-scores.
Conclusion
Our findings do not support the hypothesis that early adversity increase susceptibility for psychiatric symptoms. However, the findings emphasize the public health problem of IPV in this population, adding to the women’s mental health problem.
Publisher URL: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12888-017-1500-2
DOI: 10.1186/s12888-017-1500-2
Keeping up-to-date with research can feel impossible, with papers being published faster than you'll ever be able to read them. That's where Researcher comes in: we're simplifying discovery and making important discussions happen. With over 19,000 sources, including peer-reviewed journals, preprints, blogs, universities, podcasts and Live events across 10 research areas, you'll never miss what's important to you. It's like social media, but better. Oh, and we should mention - it's free.
Researcher displays publicly available abstracts and doesn’t host any full article content. If the content is open access, we will direct clicks from the abstracts to the publisher website and display the PDF copy on our platform. Clicks to view the full text will be directed to the publisher website, where only users with subscriptions or access through their institution are able to view the full article.