Early life adversity and clinical outcomes: Does the type of adversity matter?

Abstract

When the term “adversity” is used in a clinical context, it refers to a range of negative experiences such as abuse, neglect, poverty, bullying, or parental psychopathology. It is well-studied how adversity experienced early in childhood is associated with negative outcomes in adulthood; researchers have demonstrated connections between childhood adversity and poorer immune health, dysfunction in neural systems, worsened global physical health, and even accelerated aging (e.g., Baumeister et al., 2016; Dahmen et al., 2017). However, when researchers examine adversity, they often combine this broad range of experiences into a single construct and assess if the child has experienced adversity or not. This approach of measuring abuse with neglect, for example, fails to capture the unique differences in risk that are associated with each of those experiences. In fact, this approach has been criticized by adversity researchers due to the lack of specificity those studies can provide. Therefore, this problem is also directly applicable to clinicians; a child who experienced early life abuse and a child who experienced early life neglect could be at risk for entirely different sets of symptoms and may need different approaches to assessment and intervention accordingly.