Constellations of risk in Chilean children, relations to externalizing problems

• In Event: 1-151 - Beyond stress: Identifying specific pathways linking childhood adversity and mental health

Integrative Statement

Introduction: Compared to many other countries, children in Chile have more externalizing problems (EP) measured by the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL; Rescorla et al., 2010, 2011). Understanding “why?” is crucial for effectively addressing and preventing the potential negative consequences of nationally elevated externalizing problems. Using person-centered analyses, we identified patterns of sociodemographic and maternal risk in a nationally representative sample of Chilean families during early childhood, and examined risk class differences in mothers’ observed harsh parenting and emotional support two years later and children’s changes in externalizing symptoms over 2 years.
Method: Data came from the 2010 and 2012 waves of the Chilean Longitudinal Survey of Early Childhood (ELPI). Children aged 18 to 54 months in 2010 were examined (n = 8760, Mage = 35 months, SD = 10.17). Risk factors included low maternal education (no high school diploma), overcrowding (over 2.5 people per room), teenage mother (18 years or less), single mother, living at or below poverty, prenatal depression diagnosis, postnatal depression diagnosis, and high neuroticism (above 75% percentile). Covariates included child age, gender, and language proficiency in 2010. Harsh parenting and emotional support were observed using the HOME during 2012. EP were measured during both waves using the CBCL. We used BCH method to perform latent class modeling with continuous distal outcomes (Bakk & Vermunt, 2016) using Mplus 8.0.
Results: A five-class solution was the best fit to the data. There was a multiple risk class (C1, n = 358) with high probability exposure to low maternal education, overcrowding, poverty, prenatal depression and a mother with higher neuroticism; a single-mother in poverty class (C2, n = 1701); a low socioeconomic status class, with high exposure to poverty and with low educated mothers (C3, n = 3333); a depressed mothers class with pre and postnatal depression (C4, n = 695); and a no risk group (C5, n = 2773; Figure 2).
Multicategorical weighted mediation analyses revealed that risk groups C1, C2, and C4 showed more harsh parenting and less emotional support compared to C5, the no-risk class (Table 1). Only C1 had significantly larger increases in EP than C5 after controlling for covariates, emotional support and harsh parenting. Compared to C5, more harsh parenting and less emotional support predicted increasing EP from 2010 to 2012 in children in classes C1 (partial mediation) and C4 (full mediation; Table 1, bottom), and increasing EP in children in C2 was explained by harsh parenting only (full mediation).
Discussion: These results provide a better understanding on how co-occurring adversities differentially affect children’s mental health. In addition, they offer culturally specific information on processes that mediate constellations of risk and externalizing problems, which opens new avenues for intervention. For example, lower emotional support did not predict EP for single and poor mothers. In Chile, it is common for single mothers to live with extended family, such that children may receive more emotional support from other caregivers, which the HOME inventory would not capture. This and other explanatory processes will be examined in further analyses.

Authors

• Elisa Ugarte, University of California, Davis
  Presenting Author

• Marigen Narea, Pontificia Universidad Católica
  Non-Presenting Author

• Daniela Aldoney, Universidad del Desarrollo
  Non-Presenting Author