Abstract
The developmental origins of psychopathology begin before birth and perhaps even prior to conception. Understanding the intergenerational transmission of psychopathological risk is critical to identify sensitive windows for prevention and early intervention. Prior research demonstrates that maternal trauma history, typically assessed retrospectively, has adverse consequences for child socioemotional development. However, very few prospective studies of preconception trauma exist, and the role of preconception symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) remains unknown. The current study prospectively evaluates whether maternal preconception PTSD symptoms predict early childhood negative affectivity, a key dimension of temperament and predictor of later psychopathology. One hundred and eighteen women were recruited following a birth and prior to conception of the study child and were followed until the study child was 3-5 years old. Higher maternal PTSD symptoms prior to conception predicted greater child negative affectivity, adjusting for concurrent maternal depressive symptoms and sociodemographic covariates. In exploratory analyses, we found that neither maternal prenatal nor postpartum depressive symptoms or perceived stress mediated this association. These findings add to a limited prospective literature, highlighting the importance of assessing the mental health of women prior to conception and providing interventions that can disrupt the intergenerational sequelae of trauma.
Highlights
Maternal mental health history is strongly implicated in the developmental trajectory of child emotional development and psychopathology risk (Goodman & Gotlib, 1999; Bijl et al, 2002; Swales et al, 2020)
As the primary aim of the current analyses, we evaluated whether preconception maternal posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms predict child negative affectivity after accounting for sociodemographic covariates and concurrent maternal depressive symptoms
Maternal preconception PTSD symptoms were positively associated with child negative affectivity on the Children’s Behavior Questionnaire (CBQ)-VSF (r = .26, p = .014)
Summary
Maternal mental health history is strongly implicated in the developmental trajectory of child emotional development and psychopathology risk (Goodman & Gotlib, 1999; Bijl et al, 2002; Swales et al, 2020). Another study conducted by Hipwell et al (2019) prospectively assessed maternal childhood trauma exposure prior to conception via standardized interviews and items from the Parent-Child Conflict Tactics Scale and found that infants of mothers exposed to childhood emotional abuse were more likely to demonstrate low emotional reactivity to the still face procedure, whereas infants of mothers exposed to childhood emotional neglect demonstrated heightened emotional reactivity, even after controlling for postpartum depressive symptoms These few, prospective studies are important as they reduce the influence of recall bias and affirm the need to expand research on preconception maternal trauma and mental health and child emotion regulation outcomes. Identifying whether preconception maternal PTSD symptoms relate to child outcomes is important step in exploring whether maternal mental health prior to conception confers vulnerability for subsequent psychopathology in the generation
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