Early life programming as a target for prevention of child and adolescent mental disorders

Abstract

This paper concerns future policy development and programs of research for the prevention of mental disorders based on research emerging from fetal and early life programming. The current review offers an overview of findings on pregnancy exposures such as maternal mental health, lifestyle factors, and potential teratogenic and neurotoxic exposures on child outcomes. Outcomes of interest are common child and adolescent mental disorders including hyperactive, behavioral and emotional disorders. This literature suggests that the preconception and perinatal periods offer important opportunities for the prevention of deleterious fetal exposures. As such, the perinatal period is a critical period where future mental health prevention efforts should be focused and prevention models developed. Interventions grounded in evidence-based recommendations for the perinatal period could take the form of public health, universal and more targeted interventions. If successful, such interventions are likely to have lifelong effects on (mental) health.

Prenatal stress exposure is associated with increased dyspnoea perception in adulthood

“…This is in line with previous human and animal studies demonstrating that adverse early life experiences such as being exposed as a fetus to maternal stress, is related to the development of health and behavioural problems later in life [4][5][6][7][8][9]. However, the specific underlying mechanism for the association between prenatal stress exposure and dyspnoea perception in adulthood observed in the present study remains unclear.…”

“…Similarly, potential factors related to pregnancy [5,7] such as duration of pregnancy, birthweight and maternal consumption of cigarette smoke, caffeine and alcohol during pregnancy were not related to the present findings. Therefore, future studies are required to test further potential mechanisms that might underlie the observed association between early life adversity and perception of dyspnoea later in life.…”

“…Moreover, adverse, separation-related experiences in childhood were linked to the subsequent development of increased anxiety and dyspnoea [3]. However, the effects of adverse experiences in early, prenatal life on dyspnoea perception remain widely unknown, although prenatal exposure to maternal stress and anxiety has convincingly been related to the development of other health and behavioural problems later in life, including impairments of the respiratory control system and high anxiety levels [4][5][6][7][8][9]. Therefore, this study investigated the relationship between prenatal exposure to maternal stress and the perception of dyspnoea in adulthood 28 years later.…”

“…Therefore, future studies are required to test further potential mechanisms that might underlie the observed association between early life adversity and perception of dyspnoea later in life. These studies might include measures of the autonomic nervous system, the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, the endogenous opioidergic and chemosensitive systems as well as functional and structural measures of the brain, which have not only been suggested to be impacted by prenatal stress exposure [5][6][7][8], but are also involved in the processing of dyspnoea [2,3,9].…”

Adolescent depressive symptoms in India, Australia and USA: Exploratory Structural Equation Modelling of cross-national invariance and predictions by gender and age

“…greater probability of females being exposed to various stressors which predisposes them to depression) (48). There are also studies showing that female adolescents in western populations are more vulnerable to the quality of their relationship to their parents, than males (5) that early stress exposure may have a long terms impact on child and adolescent depression (49,50), that there may be differences emerging due to the use of emerging technologies such as social media (51).…”