Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
Childhood Problem Behaviors and Death by Midlife: The British National Child Development Study
Section snippets
Participants
The British National Child Development Study (also known as the 1958 British birth cohort) was launched in 1958.18, 19 The original participants were 17,634 individuals born in England, Wales, and Scotland during 1 week in March 1958. After the study baseline at the time of birth, data have been collected in follow-up phases at 7, 11, 16, 23, 33, 42, and 46 years of age. In the present study, we included all 11,142 participants (5,716 boys and 5,426 girls; representing 63% of the original
Results
Table 1 shows the correlations between childhood problem behaviors, childhood environments, and cognitive ability. Externalizing and internalizing behaviors were positively correlated with each other (r = 0.38), and they were both associated with adverse family environment and with low cognitive ability (Table 1). Table 2 shows the association between childhood covariates and mortality risk. As expected, in unadjusted models, high mortality risk was predicted by male sex, low social class, high
Discussion
In a large British birth cohort, childhood externalizing and internalizing behaviors predicted increased mortality between 11 and 46 years of age so that individuals with high problem behaviors in childhood had a heightened mortality risk even in adulthood. There were no interaction effects between problem behaviors and measures of childhood environment, implying that adverse childhood environment did not modify the role of problem behaviors in predicting mortality risk. The findings provide
References (33)
- et al.
Who is at greatest risk of adverse long-term outcomes? The Finnish From a Boy to a Man study
J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry
(2007) - et al.
Childhood predictors of male criminality: a prospective population-based follow-up study from age 8 to late adolescence
J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry
(2006) - et al.
Premorbid (early life) IQ and later mortality risk: systematic review
Ann Epidemiol
(2007) - et al.
Individual, family, and neighborhood factors distinguish resilient from non-resilient maltreated children: a cumulative stressors model
Child Abuse Negl
(2007) - et al.
Childhood externalizing and internalizing psychopathology in the prediction of early substance use
Addiction
(2004) - et al.
The risk for earlyadulthood anxiety and depressive disorders in adolescents with anxiety and depressive disorders
Arch Gen Psychiatry
(1998) - et al.
Childhood and adulthood psychological ill health as predictors of midlife affective and anxiety disorders: the 1958 British Birth Cohort
Arch Gen Psychiatry
(2007) - et al.
The labor market consequences of childhood maladjustment
Soc Sci Q
(2005) - et al.
Childhood antecedents of schizophrenia and affective illness: social adjustment at ages 7 and 11
BMJ
(1994) Externalizing behavior problems and academic under-achievement in childhood and adolescence: causal relationships and underlying mechanisms
Psychol Bull
(1992)
Behavior problems in preschool children: a review of recent research
J Child Psychol Psychiatry
Developmental aspects of delinquency and internalizing problems and their association with persistent juvenile substance use between ages 7 and 18
J Clin Child Psychol
Psychiatric risk factors for motor vehicle fatalities in young men
Can J Psychiatry
Mental disorders and cause-specific mortality
Br J Psychiatry
What happens to “bad” girls? A review of the adult outcomes of antisocial adolescent girls
Am J Psychiatry
Chronic family adversity and early child behavior problems: a longitudinal study of low income families
J Child Psychol Psychiatry
Cited by (117)
Generalized anxiety among Finnish youth from 2013 to 2021—Trend and the impact of COVID-19
2023, Journal of Affective DisordersAdverse childhood experiences and allostatic load: A systematic review
2022, Neuroscience and Biobehavioral ReviewsEstimating the late-life effects of social and emotional skills in childhood using midlife mediators
2022, Social Science and MedicineCitation Excerpt :However, retirement age may be a crude measure of an individual's contribution to the labour market at older ages as retirement is not an “absorbing” state and there is substantial heterogeneity in labour supply post-retirement, with some individuals choosing to re-enter the labour market after the initial retirement decision (Kanabar, 2015). Secondly, the literature uses crude measures of health (e.g. death) focusing only on death prior to age 50 (Jokela et al., 2009) and on unrepresentative samples (Piquero et al., 2014). Both limitations represent major gaps in the literature considering the rapidly ageing global population (UNFPA and Help-Age International, 2012).
This study was financially supported by the Academy of Finland (grant no. 124322 and 117604).
This article is the subject of an editorial by Dr. Adrian Angold in this issue.