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

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Childhood adversity has deleterious effects on later cognitive and emotional functioning, often manifesting as symptoms of psychopathology. Because different forms of adverse early environments frequently co-occur and demonstrate cumulative impacts on mental health, adversity is often conceptualized as operating through a convergent mechanism, usually characterized as stress, thought to operate through repeated activation of the brain and body’s stress response systems. However, increasing evidence that distinct types of adversity may have different developmental consequences motivates research to characterize how specific dimensions of adverse early experience influence emotional, cognitive, and neural mechanisms, as well as specific mental health outcomes. The four papers in this symposium: 1) identify specific profiles of adverse experiences (Ugarte et al.), 2) compare and contrast the associations of dimensions of deprivation and threat with internalizing and externalizing psychopathology (Miller et al., Weissman et al.), and 3) identify mediating mechanisms (e.g. language function, harsh parenting, cortical thickness of salience vs. cognitive control brain networks) linking different types of adversity with mental health (Miller et al., Peverill et al., Ugarte et al.). The participants in our samples represent racial, cultural, economic, national and contextual diversity, including locally representative samples at multiple sites in the southern USA (Miller et al.) a nationally representative sample from Chile (Ugarte et al.), Mexican-American adolescents (Weissman et al.), and children exposed to trauma (Peverill et al). Communicating this research therefore has the potential to inform more direct targets for policies and interventions to improve mental health outcomes for diverse communities of children and adolescents.

Sub Unit

• Developmental Psychopathology

Chair

• David Gerrick Weissman, Harvard University

Individual Presentations

• Dimensions of Deprivation and Threat, Psychopathology, and Potential Mediators: A Multi-Year Longitudinal Analysis - Presenting Author: Adam Miller, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Non-Presenting Author: Margaret Sheridan, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Non-Presenting Author: Jamie Hanson, University of Pittsburgh; Non-Presenting Author: Katie McLaughlin, Harvard University; Non-Presenting Author: John Bates, Indiana University - Bloomington; Non-Presenting Author: Jennifer Lansford, Duke University; Non-Presenting Author: Gregory S. Pettit, Auburn University; Non-Presenting Author: Kenneth A. Dodge, Duke University

• Differential association of early experiences of threat and deprivation with cortical thickness. - Presenting Author: Matt Peverill, University of Washington; Non-Presenting Author: Maya Rosen, University of Washington; Non-Presenting Author: Kelly Sambrook, University of Washington; Non-Presenting Author: Margaret Sheridan, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Non-Presenting Author: Katie McLaughlin, Harvard University

• Constellations of risk in Chilean children, relations to externalizing problems - Presenting Author: Elisa Ugarte, University of California, Davis; Non-Presenting Author: Marigen Narea, Pontificia Universidad Católica; Non-Presenting Author: Daniela Aldoney, Universidad del Desarrollo

• Consequences of poverty and community crime exposure on Mexican-American adolescents’ mental health - Presenting Author: David Gerrick Weissman, Harvard University; Non-Presenting Author: Paul Hastings, University of California, Davis; Non-Presenting Author: Richard W. Robins, University of California, Davis; Non-Presenting Author: Amanda Guyer, University of California, Davis