Perinatal and neonatal factors and mental disorders in children and adolescents: looking for the contributions of the early environment to common and dissociable aspects of psychopathology.

High rates of co-occurrence of mental disorders have been hypothesized to represent a result of common susceptibility to overall psychopathology. The purpose of this study is to test the hypothesis that commonalities among psychiatric disorders might be partially driven by sharable perinatal and neonatal environmental factors for mental disorders. Participants were 6-14 years of age children and their parents. Primary caregivers provided data on perinatal and neonatal information assessed retrospectively (n = 2231). Psychiatric disorders diagnoses were assessed using the Development and Well Being Behavior Assessment (DAWBA). We used bifactor models to disentangle common from dissociable aspects of psychopathology. These models allow modeling psychiatric disorders as the result of a common domain of psychopathology (p-factor) and three dissociable domains (fear, distress, and externalizing symptoms). Associations were tested using linear and tobit regression models. The p-factor was associated with male sex, low socioeconomic status, gestational smoking, gestational drinking, low levels of maternal education and presence of mental disorder in the mother. Associations with specific factors also emerged suggesting some risk factors might also have some role for fear, distress and externalizing factors. Our study supports the hypothesis that overall susceptibility to psychopathology might be partially driven by sharable perinatal and neonatal factors.
Competing Interests: Declarations Conflict of interest MSH, JJM, ECM, AGM, FL, LSM and GAS declare that they have no competing or potential conflicts of interest in relation to this work. PMP received scholarship from Brazilian Council of Research (CNPq). GGM receives a senior research scholarship form CNPq (grant number 304829/2013–7). RAB has received research grants from Janssen Cilag, Novartis, Roche in the last five years and the governmental funding research agencies: CAPES, CNPq and FAPESP; has been a forum consultant for Janssen, Novartis and Roche; and has participated in speaker bureaus for Ache, Janssen, Lundbeck and Novartis. LAR was on speakers’ bureau and/or acted as consultant for Eli-Lilly, Janssen-Cilag, Medice, Novartis and Shire in the past three years, receives authorship royalties from Oxford Press and ArtMed, and has received travel award from Shire and Novartis to attend the 2015 WFADHD and 2016 AACAP meetings, respectively. The ADHD Outpatient Programs chaired by him received unrestricted educational and research support from the following pharmaceutical companies in the past three years: Eli-Lilly, Janssen-Cilag, Novartis, and Shire.
(© 2024. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany.)