Early Childhood Stimulating Environment Predicts Later Childhood Resilience in an Indian Longitudinal Birth Cohort Study

Abstract

Background: Human resilience is dynamic and generated through myriad interactions starting from early childhood. Resilience can improve quality of life and longevity. Objective: The current analysis evaluates childhood resilience at 9 years of age and its associations with concurrent cognition and early childhood factors, using longitudinal follow-up of a community birth cohort in Vellore, south India. Methods: Resilience was assessed using the Child and Youth Resilience Measure and cognition utilizing the Malin’s Intelligence Scale for Indian Children. Early childhood variables included growth stunting, maternal depression scores, home environment scores, and socio-economic status (SES) at 2 years of age. Statistical evaluation included bivariate analysis with further multi-variate regression for each resilience domain and the total resilience score. Findings: Out of 251 newborns recruited into the original birth cohort, 205 (81.7%) children were available for the 9-year follow-up. Mean (SD) scores in individual, caregiving, and context domains of resilience were 26.34 (3.2), 19.52 (1.6), and 20 (1.8) respectively. Individual resilience domain was associated with verbal cognition scores at 9 years of age (0.07, p = 0.019) and total home environment scores (0.16, p = 0.027) at 2 years of age, when adjusted for stunting, maternal depression, and SES. The total resilience score was associated only with concurrent verbal intelligence (0.08, p = 0.026) after adjustment with early childhood factors. Analysis of individual home environment factors showed that daily stimulation was associated with the individual domain of resilience. Conclusions: Follow-up of an Indian birth cohort showed that in addition to concurrent cognitive abilities, childhood resilience was related to early childhood stimulating home environment. Promoting optimal stimulating home environments in low-resource settings to nurture holistic childhood development including mental health is essential.

Multisystemic approaches to researching young people’s resilience: Discovering culturally and contextually sensitive accounts of thriving under adversity

“…This greater focus on environments, especially, is becoming more commonplace in studies of resilience globally. For example, a birth cohort study from South India (Koshy et al, 2022) with 9-year-olds showed that cognitive performance on an intelligence test could be predicted by a range of factors at age two, including biological (growth stunting), family (maternal depression), environmental (quality of stimulation at home), and socioeconomic status. Like other studies from other countries, resilience was associated with a unique and contextually specific constellation of factors, in this instance the quality of the home environment and verbal intelligence, though not the other systemic factors.…”

“…Even when one or more systems are found to be non-significant to a hypothesized model, the field of resilience is increasingly moving toward looking at the systems which were not assessed (e.g., in the Koshy et al, [2022] study, one could assume that access to a supportive educational system, exposure to domestic violence, and other stressors and resources may have influenced findings). Indeed, to fully capture the many systemic interactions associated with resilience, evidence is needed from many different studies, each focused on a different set of systems with some overlap.…”

Childhood brain morphometry in children with persistent stunting and catch-up growth

“…Children were divided into four categories based on their stunting status at two, five, and nine years of age: Group NS: children who were never stunted, Group S2N5: children who were stunted at two years with a catch-up at five years, and Group S5N9: children stunted at two and five years, with a catch-up at nine years, and Group AS: children stunted at two, five, and nine years [14]. Details of baseline demographic information and clinical characteristics were summarised.…”

“…251 new-borns were enlisted between March 2010 and February 2012 and followed up at different time points including at ages two, five, and nine years. Details of enrolment and follow-ups are already published [13][14][15]. At each level, enrolment of the child was conditional upon written informed consent from parents, with additional child assent required at the age of nine.…”