Comparison of Person-Centered and Cumulative Risk Approaches in Explaining the Relationship Between Adverse Childhood Experiences and Behavioral and Emotional Problems

Abstract

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) commonly co-occur, and researchers often estimate their impact using a cumulative risk approach. The person-centered approach offers another approach to operationalize the co-occurrence of ACEs. This study aims to estimate latent classes of ACEs in a sample of U.K. children, examine their relationship with emotional and behavioral problems, and compare the explanatory value of the latent classes to cumulative risk scores. Data were collected among a general population sample of British 10-year-old children extracted from the U.K. Household Longitudinal Study ( N = 601). Seven items characterized ACEs, comprising parent-report physical discipline, emotional abuse, supervisory neglect, maternal psychological distress, child-report parental educational disinterest, bullying victimization, and adverse neighborhood. Outcome measures were derived from the self-report Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire including total difficulties, emotional symptoms, conduct problems, hyperactivity, peer problems, and prosocial behavior. Latent class analysis resulted in a three-class solution: low ACEs, household challenges, and community challenges. Compared to the other classes, the community challenges class scored substantially worse on total difficulties, emotional symptoms, and peer subscales. The cumulative risk score was associated with all outcomes except prosocial behavior. Cumulative risk models accounted for a larger proportion of variance compared with the latent class models, except for peer problems which the person-centered model explained better. This study confirms that ACEs are associated with impairment in child functioning, and that both person-centered and cumulative risk approaches can capture this relationship well. Specifically, the person-centered approach demonstrated how co-occurring risk factors in the community challenges class produced particularly poor internalizing outcomes.

Adolescent Patients’experiences of Mental Disorders Related to School Bullying

“…Current media and academic circles focus on the causes of, and solutions to, violence in school bullying, little attention is paid to its long-term impact on the physical and mental health and psychological experiences of victims. 19,20 This study aimed to explore the real inner experience and nursing needs of adolescent patients who suffered from school bullying, and to develop a treatment plan to restore adolescent mental health. Based on the real experiences of adolescent patients with mental disorders caused by school bullying (including mood disorders, anxiety disorders, trauma and stress related disorders, substance related disorders, mania et al), qualitative research methods were used to study the psychological experiences and nursing requirements of adolescent patients to provide a pertinent reference and guidance for the implementation of related nursing measures.…”

“…Current media and academic circles focus on the causes of, and solutions to, violence in school bullying, little attention is paid to its long-term impact on the physical and mental health and psychological experiences of victims. 19 , 20 …”

Patterns of Adverse Childhood Experiences and Neurocognitive Development

“…It is, therefore, important to further investigate the co-occurrence of different types of adversities among children and the resulting developmental outcomes, both of which could contribute to more effective interventions. Person-centered methods such as latent class analysis (LCA) are ideal for identifying common patterns of exposure and then tracking the psychiatric and behavioral outcomes of those patterns . For example, using data from the Fragile Families Child Well-being Study, Wang et al analyzed 10 adversities (eg, domestic violence, parental separation, and financial difficulties) at age 3 years using LCA to examine their associations with later internalizing and externalizing symptoms.…”

“…Person-centered methods such as latent class analysis (LCA) are ideal for identifying common patterns of exposure and then tracking the psychiatric and behavioral outcomes of those patterns. [23][24][25][26][27][28] For example, using data from the Fragile Families Child Well-being Study, Wang et al 29 analyzed 10 adversities (eg, domestic violence, parental separation, and financial difficulties) at age 3 years using LCA to examine their associations with later internalizing and externalizing symptoms. They found that children exposed to certain patterns of adversities, especially financial difficulty and child maltreatment (eg, psychological abuse, physical abuse, and neglect), exhibited more internalizing and externalizing behaviors at ages 5, 9, and 15 years than children exposed to low adversity.…”

The Mediating Effect of Post-Traumatic Growth on the Relationship between Adverse Childhood Experiences and Psychological Distress in Adults

“…Many studies show that more than half of individuals have experienced at least one ACE (Esaki and Larkin 2013;Felitti et al 1998;Hales et al 2023;Manyema et al 2018;Merrick et al 2017;Nevárez-Mendoza and Ochoa-Meza 2022;Soares et al 2022). The most common types of ACEs are emotional abuse (67-82.9%) (Amaranggani and Dewi 2022;Goodman et al 2022), emotional neglect (60-82.2%) (AlHemyari et al 2022;Craig et al 2023), parental separation or divorce (42-77.6%) (Martin et al 2022;Soares et al 2016), and substance abuse in the household (25.6-31.6%) (Felitti et al 1998, Nevárez-Mendoza andOchoa-Meza 2022).…”