Early Indicators of Developmental Risk: Rochester Longitudinal Study

Abstract

Early indicators of schizophrenic outcomes were sought in a group of children of chronically ill schizophrenic women. A sample of pregnant women with varying degrees of mental illness were examined during the perinatal period and recruited into a 4-year longitudinal evaluation, which included cognitive, psychomotor, social, and emotional assessments at birth, 4, 12, 30, and 48 months of age. The mothers varied on mental health dimensions of diagnosis, severity of symptomatology, and chronicity of illness. Other factors included in the analyses were socioeconomic status (SES), race, sex of child, and family size. Hypotheses were tested to determine the relative impact of three sets of variables on the child's behavior: (1) specific maternal psychiatric diagnosis, (2) severity and chronicity of disturbance independent of diagnosis, and (3) general social status. We found that a specific maternal diagnosis of schizophrenia had the least impact. Neurotic-depressive mothers produced worse development in their children than schizophrenic or personality-disordered mothers. Both social status and severity/chronicity of illness showed a greater impact on development. Children of more severely or chronically ill mothers and lower-SES black children performed most poorly. These results do not support etiological models based on simple biological or environmental transmission of schizophrenia. The role of social and family environmental factors in predicting child cognitive and social-emotional competence was further evaluated using a multiple risk index. Children with high multiple environmental risk scores had much worse outcomes than children with low multiple risk scores.

Examining the rights of children with intellectual disability in South Africa: Children's perspectives

“…Rutter's (1987) seminal research found that the accumulation of risks increased the likelihood of adverse developmental outcomes. Subsequent research found similar negative trends between risk and children's outcomes in academic achievement (Burchinal, Roberts, Zeisel, & Rowley, 2008), language (Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000), and IQ scores (Sameroff, Seifer, Zax, & Barocas, 1987). Together, these findings suggest that, rather than the influence of a particular risk, the number of risks children were experiencing best predicted their outcomes.…”

Full Issue

“…Studies supporting this approach have generally concluded that developmental difficulties tend to increase with the number of risk factors (Hooper, Burchinal, Roberts, Zeisel, & Neebe, 1998;Jaffe, Capsi, Moffitt, Polo-Tomás, & Taylor, 2007;MacKenzie et al, 2011). Pioneers in this approach, Sameroff et al (1987) found that each additional risk factor resulted in an average decrease of four verbal intelligence quotient (IQ) points in the Rochester Longitudinal Study, which evaluated 215 four-year-old children from socially heterogeneous environments. This result has been replicated in three independent studies examining different child outcomes (Atzaba-Poria, Pike, & Deater-Deckard, 2004;Biederman, Faraone, & Monuteaux, 2002;Raviv, Taussig, Culhane, & Garrido, 2010;Yumoto, Jacobson, & Jacobson, 2008).…”

Coping bei Kindern schizophren erkrankter Eltern - eine täuschend gute Bewältigung

“…Zwar beträgt die Erblichkeit der Erkrankung für diese Kinder aufgrund der genetischen Determiniertheit 10-13 % (Tienari et al, 1987), jedoch ist das Risiko unspezifischer Störungen für Kinder, die mit ihren psychisch kranken Eltern zusammenleben, weitaus größer (Lenz, 2005). Einfluss nehmen dabei vor allem die psychosozialen Bedingungen, die in Folge der Erkrankung in den Familien herr-schen, sowie Chronizität und Schweregrad der Erkrankung (Sameroff et al, 1987). Faktoren, die das Risiko einer eigenen Erkrankung minimieren sollen, werden in der Resilienzforschung beleuchtet, wobei der Fokus seit (Bleuler, 1974) auf jene Kinder gelenkt wird, die sich günstig entwickeln.…”