new study published in The Lancet, conducted by researchers from the Universities of Copenhagen and Liverpool, shows that adversity in childhood increases the risk of premature death in early adulthood.
Children who have experienced repeated serious adversity such as losing a parent, mental illness in the family, poverty or being placed in foster care have a 4.5 times higher risk of dying in early adulthood than children who have not experienced adversity during childhood.
Childhood is a sensitive period with rapid brain development and physiological growth, and adverse events in childhood might interfere with these processes and have long-lasting effects on health.
In order to gain a better understanding of how these adverse events in childhood relate to mortality in early adult life researchers conducted a study that recorded repeated serious adversity in childhood among one million Danish children and then examined their mortality rates between 16 and 34 years.
Three dimensions of childhood adversities were identified by the researchers: poverty and material deprivation, loss or threat of loss within the family, and aspects of family dynamics such as maternal separation.
The researchers divided the children into five groups depending on the degree of adversity experienced in childhood.
The researchers found that the more stressful experiences they have experienced during childhood, the higher the mortality rate in early adulthood.
Professor David Taylor-Robinson, University of Liverpool, said: “Child poverty and adversity damages health across the lifespan even in Denmark where levels of poverty are much lower than in the UK. These findings are really concerning given the current UK context where over 1 in 3 children lives in poverty and this is predicted to rise. It is time for the government to reverse this trend establishing a welfare system that protects children from poverty and material deprivation.
“We know that childhood adversity has a myriad of adverse impacts on multiple aspects of child health and development that will have repercussions for decades to come. The results of the study stress the critical importance of broad structural public-health initiatives to reduce poverty and prevent adversity in childhood as well as appropriate support for vulnerable children who experience severe adversities.”
