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Cumulative Childhood Adversity and Its Associations With Mental Health in Childhood, Adolescence, and Adulthood in Rural China

Capitalizing on a 15-year longitudinal dataset of 9–12 years old children in rural China, this study adopts a life course perspective and analyzes cumulative childhood adversity and its associations with mental health problems from childhood to adulthood. Four domains of childhood life are selected...

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Autor principal: Shen, Wensong
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8595832/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34803852
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.768315
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author Shen, Wensong
author_facet Shen, Wensong
author_sort Shen, Wensong
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description Capitalizing on a 15-year longitudinal dataset of 9–12 years old children in rural China, this study adopts a life course perspective and analyzes cumulative childhood adversity and its associations with mental health problems from childhood to adulthood. Four domains of childhood life are selected to construct cumulative childhood adversity: socioeconomic hardship, family disruption, physical issue, and academic setback. Overall, cumulative childhood adversity significantly associates with children’s internalizing and externalizing problems as well as adults’ depression and self-esteem. However, cumulative childhood adversity has no significant relationship with internalizing and externalizing problems in adolescence. Furthermore, different domains of childhood adversity matter differently for mental health problems in different life stages. Physical issue and academic setback have the strongest association with internalizing and externalizing problems in childhood, while only socioeconomic hardship has a significant relationship with depression and self-esteem in adulthood. The relationship between cumulative childhood adversity and adult mental health problems is fully mediated by educational attainment. Finally, there is no gender difference in either the occurrence of cumulative childhood adversity or the association between cumulative childhood adversity and mental health problems.
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spelling pubmed-85958322021-11-18 Cumulative Childhood Adversity and Its Associations With Mental Health in Childhood, Adolescence, and Adulthood in Rural China Shen, Wensong Front Psychol Psychology Capitalizing on a 15-year longitudinal dataset of 9–12 years old children in rural China, this study adopts a life course perspective and analyzes cumulative childhood adversity and its associations with mental health problems from childhood to adulthood. Four domains of childhood life are selected to construct cumulative childhood adversity: socioeconomic hardship, family disruption, physical issue, and academic setback. Overall, cumulative childhood adversity significantly associates with children’s internalizing and externalizing problems as well as adults’ depression and self-esteem. However, cumulative childhood adversity has no significant relationship with internalizing and externalizing problems in adolescence. Furthermore, different domains of childhood adversity matter differently for mental health problems in different life stages. Physical issue and academic setback have the strongest association with internalizing and externalizing problems in childhood, while only socioeconomic hardship has a significant relationship with depression and self-esteem in adulthood. The relationship between cumulative childhood adversity and adult mental health problems is fully mediated by educational attainment. Finally, there is no gender difference in either the occurrence of cumulative childhood adversity or the association between cumulative childhood adversity and mental health problems. Frontiers Media S.A. 2021-11-03 /pmc/articles/PMC8595832/ /pubmed/34803852 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.768315 Text en Copyright © 2021 Shen. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/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) and the copyright owner(s) 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.
spellingShingle Psychology
Shen, Wensong
Cumulative Childhood Adversity and Its Associations With Mental Health in Childhood, Adolescence, and Adulthood in Rural China
title Cumulative Childhood Adversity and Its Associations With Mental Health in Childhood, Adolescence, and Adulthood in Rural China
title_full Cumulative Childhood Adversity and Its Associations With Mental Health in Childhood, Adolescence, and Adulthood in Rural China
title_fullStr Cumulative Childhood Adversity and Its Associations With Mental Health in Childhood, Adolescence, and Adulthood in Rural China
title_full_unstemmed Cumulative Childhood Adversity and Its Associations With Mental Health in Childhood, Adolescence, and Adulthood in Rural China
title_short Cumulative Childhood Adversity and Its Associations With Mental Health in Childhood, Adolescence, and Adulthood in Rural China
title_sort cumulative childhood adversity and its associations with mental health in childhood, adolescence, and adulthood in rural china
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8595832/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34803852
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.768315
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