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Background This paper enumerates and characterizes latent classes of adverse childhood experiences and investigates how they relate to prenatal substance use (i.e., smoking, alcohol, and other drugs) and poor infant outcomes (i.e., infant prematurity and low birthweight) across eight low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Methods A total of 1189 mother-infant dyads from the Evidence for Better Lives Study cohort were recruited. Latent class analysis using the Bolck, Croon, and Hagenaars (BCH) 3-step method with auxiliary multilevel logistic regressions was performed. Results Three high-risk classes and one low-risk class emerged: (1) highly maltreated (7%, n = 89), (2) emotionally and physically abused with intra-familial violence exposure (13%, n = 152), (3), emotionally abused (40%, n = 474), and (4) low household dysfunction and abuse (40%, n = 474). Pairwise comparisons between classes indicate higher probabilities of prenatal drug use in the highly maltreated and emotionally abused classes compared with the low household dysfunction and abuse class. Additionally, the emotionally and physically abused with intra-familial violence exposure class had higher probability of low birthweight than the three remaining classes. Conclusion Our results highlight the multifaceted nature of ACEs and underline the potential importance of exposure to childhood adversities on behaviors and outcomes in the perinatal period. This can inform the design of antenatal support to better address these challenges.

Within developmental science, there is a gap between our understanding of long-term ‘developmental’ processes, investigated via traditional longitudinal cohort designs, and our understanding of short-term ‘momentary’ processes, investigated via lab-based studies or, increasingly, via ecological momentary assessment (EMA) methods. To bridge this gap, multi-timeframe studies that link momentary processes to long-term developmental trajectories are needed. One promising approach is to embed studies of momentary processes within long-term cohort studies. This is the design of the decades-to-minutes (D2M) study, which combines a burst of EMA (n=255 young adult participants) with a 13-year longitudinal cohort study of development from childhood through to adulthood. Here we describe the rationale for, and design of D2M and provide an illustrative dynamic structural equation modelling analysis from the data. We also provide suggestions for future developments in the design and implementation of multi-timeframe studies. We conclude that embedding EMA within existing longitudinal studies is an efficient, feasible and scientifically valuable approach to studying development across multiple timescales and suggest that future studies of this type on a larger scale would be valuable for the field.

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Background Early to middle adolescence is a critical period of development for mental health issues. Illuminating sex/gender differences in mental health trajectories in this period is important for targeting screening and preventive interventions; however, evidence to date on the extent and nature of sex/gender differences in common mental health issue trajectories in this period has produced mixed findings. There is a particular gap in our knowledge of sex/gender differences in the joint trajectories of commonly co‐occurring mental health issues in adolescence, given the strong tendency for mental health issues to co‐occur. Method We applied sex/gender‐stratified latent class growth analysis to an age‐heterogeneous cohort (age 10–15) derived from the population‐representative UK Household Longitudinal Study. We explored sex/gender differences in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms, internalizing problems, and conduct problems individually and jointly. Results We found indications of sex/gender differences in a number of areas. There were fewer classes in the optimal model to describe the heterogeneity in internalizing problems and conduct problems trajectories in males and females respectively. Further, for ADHD, affected males were more likely to enter adolescence with already elevated symptoms whereas affected female trajectories were characterized by an escalation of symptoms during adolescence. Conclusions There are sex/gender differences in the levels and trajectories of specific mental health symptoms in early to middle adolescence; however, in both males and females there is a strong tendency for multiple issues to co‐occur.

Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) has seen an explosion in popularity in recent years; however, knowledge of the respondent characteristics that predict compliance lags behind. This knowledge can be valuable for informing strategies to improve compliance and minimise bias due to non-random non-response with respect to participant characteristics. We examined a range of characteristics as predictors of compliance in a two-week 4 prompt per day EMA study of n=255 individuals (the ‘D2M’ study) drawn from the longitudinal z-proso cohort. We found that in unadjusted analyses, lower moral shame, lower self-control, lower levels of self-injury, and higher levels of aggression, tobacco use, psychopathy and delinquency were associated with the completion of smaller numbers of prompts. These findings provide potential insights into some of the psychological mechanisms that may underlie compliance in EMA. They also point to respondent characteristics for which strategies such as baseline oversampling or tailored protocols may be helpful to improve compliance and reduce bias.

Mothers from middle-income countries (MIC) are estimated to have higher rates of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and depression during pregnancy compared to mothers from high income countries. Prenatal depression can adversely impact on a mother's feelings towards her foetus and has thus been hypothesised to be partially responsible for intergenerational transmission of risk associated with maternal ACEs. However, the extent to which prenatal depressive symptoms mediate the association between maternal ACEs and foetal attachment is unknown. The current study investigated this question in a multi-country sample of mothers in their third trimester of pregnancy. Expectant mothers (n = 1,185) from eight MICs completed measures of foetal attachment, ACEs and prenatal depression. Full-sample path mediation analyses, adjusting for relevant covariates, suggested an overall full mediating effect of prenatal depression, as the relationship between ACEs and foetal attachment became non-significant when adding maternal depression as a mediator. However, at the individual-country level, both positive and negative effects of ACEs on foetal attachment were observed after the inclusion of depressive symptoms as a mediator, suggesting that cultural and geographical factors may influence a mother’s empathic development after ACE exposure. The findings reinforce the importance of screening for prenatal depression during antenatal care in MICs. Addressing prenatal depression within maternal health care may support foetal attachment and contribute to reducing the intergenerational transmission of disadvantage.