Cumulative risk and child development.

Introduction: Childhood development represents a sequence of changes in behavior and underlying processes, in luenced by biological and environmental factors. Screening and monitoring of neurodevelopment show effective procedures for early identi ication of different disorders of childhood development. Objective: To analyze the neurodevelopment, using the Denver Developmental Screening Test II, of children enrolled in preschools of Administrative Districts in Belém and to map the districts and the percentage of development evaluated as normal and suspected delay. Methods: This was a cross-sectional and exploratory descriptive study. A questionnaire was administered to parents to collect the personal, contextual and family data and an instrument to measure the level of family poverty. Results: Of the 319 children assessed, 77.7% showed a suspected delay in neuropsychomotor developmental and 59.2% in language. The family poverty level variable showed a statistically signi icant association with the overall level of development (p = .011) and of language (p = .003). Conclusion: It is hoped that this study will contribute to generate an impact in improving the ecological conditions of children and their families, reducing the risks to which they are exposed. Keywords:Child. Childhood Development. Poverty.

Policy Points: The developmental origins understanding of mental illness suggests the possibility of prevention, through addressing childhood adversities.More than 43% of Indigenous Australian children aged 6 to 10 years have 6 or more risk factors for mental illness in adulthood, and 23% are experiencing current psychological distress.Substantial risk is already present in infancy (eg, 67% exposed to 3 or more stressful family life events, and 42.5% are not living with both birth parents).An integrated service system response that can both offer high‐level therapeutic services and address associated multiple adversities, from conception to late adolescence, is urgently needed to address current psychological distress in Indigenous Australian children and to reduce the future burden of mental illness. ContextMental illness is a high source of disease burden across the globe. Mental illness is now understood as largely developmental, with its genesis at least in part in adverse childhood experiences. We sought to estimate the prevalence of childhood risks for poor mental health in Indigenous Australian children, noting that Indigenous Australians by virtue of their history of traumatic colonization and dispossession, child removal, and racism are potentially at greater risk.MethodsWe conducted a descriptive study of the modifiable risks and adversities associated with mental illness in Australian Indigenous children (infancy to 10 years), using data from the Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children (LSIC), a cohort of 1,671 infants enrolled in 2008 and followed up annually. Risk factors of interest were identified from a comprehensive literature review of childhood determinants of adult mental illness by Fryers and Brugha (2013). The age‐category prevalence of individual risks and a multiple‐risk score were computed using data extracted from 6 waves of LSIC.FindingsThe analytic data comprised 8,378 person‐observations from the first 6 waves. Children in LSIC experience high rates of adversities. In utero, nearly 50% were exposed to smoking and 22% to alcohol. As infants, 42.5% were not living with both birth parents. Over two‐thirds of survey children were in households that had experienced, in the previous 12 months, 3 or more major life events; 22% to 26% lived in households with a drug or alcohol problem; and 18% were exposed to domestic violence (41% were ever‐exposed to age 10). At school, nearly 40% of children were bullied. Over 45% of children aged 6 to 10 years were exposed to 6 or more risks for mental illness. Few children (< 2%) were exposed to low parental warmth and, despite the high exposure to adversities, less than 5% of children report low self‐confidence. This suggests considerable resilience. More than 1 in 4 children had conduct problems in the clinical range and more than 1 in 5 were experiencing high psychological distress.ConclusionsIndigenous children in Australia face extreme levels of multiple disadvantage, exposing many to current psychological distress and high risk of developing me...

The paper examines the antecedents of criminal behavior through the process of retrospective family and life course histories in which incarcerated male inmates and male university students are compared. The main focus is on early childhood experiences and parental behaviors. The study data derive from intensive, face-to-face interviews with 38 men incarcerated for violent offences and a matched group of 66 men attending university at the same time. The interviews focus on the relative importance of adverse childhood experiences and linkages with adolescence. The interviews demonstrated that nearly four-fifths of the inmates experienced toxic family environments by the time they reached adolescence, as compared with only two of the university students. Qualitative analyses flesh out the major themes, experiences, and "risk factors" that helped shape the trajectories of both groups of men. The socially toxic family environments and sub-optimal parenting practices that most inmates endured produced long-term, adverse effects in reducing their capacities for resilience, forging healthy relationships with their peers, and remaining in school.