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Adverse childhood experiences and trajectories of internalizing, externalizing, and prosocial behaviors from childhood to adolescence
Open accessAbstract
Background Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) predict poorer mental health across the life course but most of the extant research has employed ACE scores or individual adversities using retrospective data.Objectives To study the impact of ACEs on later mental health using not only ACEs scores and individual ACEs, but also latent class analysis (LCA), which respects the clustering of adversities.Participants and setting 8823 members from the UK Millennium Cohort Study.Methods We investigated the impact of prospectively reported ACEs on mental health trajectories derived using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire at age 3, 5, 7, 11 and 14. Associations between LCA-derived ACE clusters, ACE scores, individual ACEs and mental health trajectories were tested using linear mixed effects models.Results With statistical significance set at 5% level, ACE scores showed a graded association with internalizing (ACE score of 1: β = 0.057; ACE score of 2: β = 0.108; ACE score of 3: β = 0.202), externalizing (ACE score of 1: β = 0.142; ACE score of 2: β = 0.299; ACE score of 3: β = 0.415) and prosocial behaviors (ACE score of 1: β=-0.019; ACE score of 2: β=-0.042; ACE score of 3: β=-0.059). Harsh parenting and physical punishment were particularly strongly associated with externalizing (β = 0.270 and β = 0.256) and negatively associated with prosocial behaviors (β=-0.046 and β=-0.058). Parental discord and parental depression showed the strongest associations with internalizing problems (β = 0.125 and β = 0.113). LCA did not discriminate ACE clusters in this dataset.Conclusions ACEs have an important impact on mental health from childhood to adolescence. ACEs score approach yielded useful results, which were further enhanced by exploring individual ACEs.
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“Research by Bevilacqua et al. (2021) which used a nationally representative UK survey found no significant association between parental discord and children's prosocial behaviours, but the study did not measure DV exposure.”
From Risk and protective factors for children's psychopathology in the context of domestic violence – A study using nationally representative longitudinal survey data (2023) · cites this paper as Bevilacqua et al., 2021
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“The effect of ACEs was greater for externalising behaviours, compared to internalising and prosocial behaviours, which is largely in line with our own findings.”
From Risk and protective factors for children's psychopathology in the context of domestic violence – A study using nationally representative longitudinal survey data (2023) · cites this paper as Bevilacqua et al., 2021
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Metadata
- Authors
- Bevilacqua, L., Kelly, Y., Heilmann, A., Priest, N., & Lacey, R. E.
- Affiliations
- University College London (GB)
- Australian National University (AU)
- Corresponding author
- Bevilacqua, Leonardo
- Venue
- Child Abuse & Neglect
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2021-02
- Volume
- 112
- Pages
- 104890
- ISSN
- 0145-2134 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W3120713439
- Cited by
- 183
- References
- 69
- Citations by year
- 2026: 30 · 2025: 35 · 2024: 39 · 2023: 41 · 2022: 32 · 2021: 6
- FWCI
- 20.16
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- discovery.ucl.ac.uk
- Licence
- Locations
- Child Abuse & Neglect (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- UCL Discovery (University College London) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- Minerva Access (University of Melbourne) (submittedVersion)
- ANU Open Research (Australian National University) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- Funders
- Economic and Social Research Council
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Child Abuse and Trauma
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Child Welfare and Adoption
- Keywords
- adverse childhood experiences, internalizing problems, externalizing problems, prosocial behavior, mental health trajectories, ACE score, latent class analysis, harsh parenting, corporal punishment, parental conflict, parental depression, childhood to adolescence, Millennium Cohort Study
- MeSH terms
- Adverse Childhood Experiences, Adolescent, Altruism, Humans, Retrospective Studies, Cohort Studies, Parenting
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