Psychological, endocrine and polygenic predictors of emotional well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic in a longitudinal birth cohort

Abstract

Stress is an established risk factor for somatic and mental disorders. The COVID-19 pandemic and the related countermeasures severely affect the lives of families. Prenatal stress, dysregulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, and genetic factors might impact the well-being of individuals. The present work is part of an ongoing birth cohort study and aims to investigate maternal perceived stress, early childhood HPA axis activity and polygenic risk scores (PRSs) as predictors of emotional well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic. All participants are part of the ongoing birth cohort study POSEIDON. Emotional well-being of children (n = 259) and mothers (n = 211) was assessed during the COVID-19 pandemic using the CRISIS questionnaire. Furthermore, associations between previously assessed maternal perceived stress (Perceived Stress Scale), children's salivary and morning urine cortisol measures at 45 months, PRSs for depression, schizophrenia, loneliness and current emotional well-being were investigated. A positive association between the child's and the mother's emotional well-being was found. A worse emotional well-being was observed in both children and mothers during the pandemic compared to before. Children's emotional well-being improved over the course of the pandemic, while mothers' well-being worsened. Maternal perceived stress, salivary and morning urine cortisol and PRSs were not significantly associated with the assessed emotional wellbeing. The present study confirms that emotional well-being of children and mothers is negatively affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, with differences in development over time. Future studies should examine which mechanisms contribute to stress-related associations and at which age they can be identified.

Correlations between somatic symptoms and resilience among a group of Vietnamese : Lessons learned from Covid 19

“…Mental health such as anxiety and depression, can also affect physical health and reveal physical symptoms. Killgore and colleagues (2020) and Nguyen (found that resilience was found higher in people who tended to exercise, pray regularly and sleep well [31], [32].…”