The first-of-its-kind study, published in The Lancet Public Health today [3 February] and funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research Policy Research Programme, found that mothers whose firstborns had experienced adverse childhood experiences had a 71% increased risk of having children (aged five to 18 years) with mental health problems, compared to mothers whose firstborn did not experience adversity.
This translates to 12 additional children with mental health problems for every 100 mothers whose firstborn experienced adversity.
These findings underscore the pervasive risk that early adversity can have on multiple children in the family, and the importance of early identification and sustained support for vulnerable families beyond the first 1,000 days of a child's life.
As part of the study, researchers analysed linked GP and hospital health records from 333,048 first-time mothers and their 534,904 children (firstborns and siblings) born in England between 2002 and 2018. They focused on six different forms of adverse childhood experiences in the firstborn child recorded during their first 1,000 days of life (from conception up until the age of two).
These included: child maltreatment, intimate partner violence, maternal substance misuse, maternal mental health problems, adverse family environments (e.g. homelessness), and high-risk presentations of child maltreatment (e.g. unexplained child injuries).
Over a third (37.1%) of firstborn children had at least one recorded adverse childhood experience. The most common adverse childhood experiences were living with maternal mental health problems (21.6%), followed by adverse family environments (14.5%) such as parental criminality and housing instability.
Read the full University of Bristol news item
Paper: 'Adverse childhood experiences in firstborns and mental health risk and healthcare utilisation in siblings: a population-based birth cohort study of half a million children in England' by Shabeer Syed, Laura D Howe, Rebecca E Lacey, Jessica Deighton, Muhammad Qummer ul Arfeen, Gene Feder, Ruth Gilbert in The Lancet Public Health [open access]