:quality(85)//cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/infobae/5IKICJQRNFGINKDMUKMOV6ISNI.jpg "Early childhood adversities can lead to poor cognitive performance in adolescence")
Early childhood adversity has long-lasting effects in the children’s mental health. However, if mental health improves over time, this result may be mitigated. While many researchers and practitioners have noted that the effects of adversity in early life are likely to be heterogeneous and dynamic over the long term, there has been little empirical work incorporating the necessary breadth of findings, timelines and appropriate and necessary theoretical and statistical frameworks. .) to probe such complex effects.
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Understand and intervene effectively in the trajectories of effects of adversity in early childhood, there was a need to effectively map such heterogeneity. Now, a new study by researchers at the University of Cambridge, in collaboration with Nigerian colleagues, has revealed the interplay between early-life adversity, mental health difficulties and cognitive functioning throughout the lifespan. from childhood.
The results, published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatryshow that child mental health influences the extent to which adversity in early life affects later cognitive functioning.
Facts like poverty, illness or family conflict it has long been linked to mental health problems and lower cognitive functioning as children get older. But until now, it was unknown how these factors interact and change over time. Scientists analyzed data from the ongoing Millennial Cohort Study, which assessed 13.287 children in a variety of tests at ages three, five, seven, eleven and fourteen. They selected measures of adversity in early life before the age of three, which they categorized into mental health and cognitive functioning, that is, working memory and vocabulary.
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The team from the University of Cambridge’s MRC Brain Sciences and Cognition Unit used a statistical technique designed to determine how much mental health affects the relationship between adversity and early childhood achievement. Cognitive functioning later.
They found that early life adversity is associated with lower working memory and vocabulary performance due to its impact on childhood mental health. For example, poorer mental health between ages 3 and 14 due to adversity in early life explained the 59% of the variance of poorer performance in working memory at age 11 and explain 70% of the poorer performance in vocabulary at age 14.
The researchers showed that adversity at age three strongly predicted poorer mental health between ages 3 and 14, with the strongest association at age three, but gradually weakening with time. In other words, children who experienced adversity early in life were more likely to experience mental health difficulties between the ages of three and 14, although the worst were more often at home. three years old until later.
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This suggests that exposure to adversity at this sensitive time in development has an impact negative long-term mental health. They also found that decreasing mental health problems over time were associated with improvements in working memory and vocabulary. This suggests that if behavioral and psychological difficulties can be addressed when children are young, the effects of early childhood adversity on later cognition might be mitigated.
This finding has important implications for clinicians, educators, and parents involved in interventions. “Our results suggest that adversity like this can lead to prolonged periods of poor mental health, which in turn can have long-lasting effects on cognitive performance, such as working memory and vocabulary,” the study said. lead author Tochukwu. Nweze, from the MRC Cognition and Brain Science Unit at Cambridge.
He continued, “We already know that poor mental health and poor cognition are associated with many behavioral problems that affect quality of life and satisfaction. This reinforces the need for early interventions to provide children with the best possible outcomes in life.
The researchers noted that at a time of growing mental health problems among adolescents and young people, compounded by contemporary risk factors such as conflict, pandemics and climate change, educators and clinicians need to focus on the development of resilience in children who had early problems.
“In this way, we can hope to overcome the autonomic mental health difficulties faced by people who experienced adversity in early childhood,” Nweze concluded. Michael Ezenwa, Cyriacus Ajaelu and Chukwuemeka Okoye also participated in this work.
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