Advancing prevention science for maltreatment exposed children: predicting mental health symptoms with a combined neurocognitive vulnerability index.
Childhood maltreatment is an established risk factor for poor mental health, yet not all maltreatment-exposed children develop psychiatric symptoms. This highlights the need for individualised metrics to detect those at heightened risk. Previous efforts to develop such metrics have largely focused o...
| Publicado en: | European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry Vol. 35; no. 3; pp. 835 - 844 |
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| Autores principales: | , , , , |
| Formato: | research tables/charts Journal Article |
| Publicado: |
Springer Nature
Mar2026
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ccm&AN=194042334&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: ccm uiTerm: 194042334 longDbName: CINAHL Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: dissinfo: jinfo: jid: 10188827 EJ3 jtl: European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry issn: 10188827 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Mar2026 vid: 35 iid: 3 pid: 237 pub: Springer Nature place: New York, New York artinfo: ui: 194042334 188795857 194042334 194042334 10.1007/s00787-025-02838-y 194042334 ppf: 835 ppct: 9 formats: tig: atl: Advancing prevention science for maltreatment exposed children: predicting mental health symptoms with a combined neurocognitive vulnerability index. aug: au: Gerin, Mattia I. Viding, Essi Armbruster‑Genç, Diana J. N. Roiser, Jonathan P. McCrory, Eamon J. affil: https://ror.org/04teye511 Escuela de Psicología, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile sug: subj: Preventive Health Care Adverse Childhood Experiences Complications Child Abuse Complications Disease Susceptibility Evaluation Neuropsychological Tests Social Cognition Evaluation Social Cognition Evaluation Reward Evaluation Task Performance and Analysis Mental Disorders Risk Factors Risk Assessment Mental Disorders Prevention and Control Human Funding Source Male Female Child Adolescence Comparative Studies Peer Group United Kingdom Logistic Regression Descriptive Statistics Odds Ratio Confidence Intervals Sensitivity and Specificity Predictive Validity Pearson's Correlation Coefficient Chi Square Test Prospective Studies Psychological Tests Caregivers Questionnaires Child Abuse Survivors Psychosocial Factors Child: 6-12 years Adolescent: 13-18 years Male Female ab: Childhood maltreatment is an established risk factor for poor mental health, yet not all maltreatment-exposed children develop psychiatric symptoms. This highlights the need for individualised metrics to detect those at heightened risk. Previous efforts to develop such metrics have largely focused on maltreatment severity and aggregate demographic risk. Although neurocognitive alterations in domains like social cognition and reward processing have been linked to maltreatment, most research has examined cross-sectional group-level differences in isolated domains. This proof-of-concept study examines whether indexing combined neurocognitive vulnerability can help predict which maltreatment-exposed children are most at risk of future symptom increases. A sample (mean age = 12.8) of maltreatment-exposed children (MT = 85) and propensity-score matched (PSM) non-maltreated peers (NMT = 90) were assessed at baseline using five neurocognitive tasks spanning various domains of social cognition and reward processing. A combined neurocognitive vulnerability metric was created, and symptom changes were measured 1.5 years later for a subset of individuals (MT = 57, NMT = 47). Combined neurocognitive vulnerability predicted future mental health symptom increases in the maltreatment-exposed group, even after controlling for baseline symptoms and clinical status. Maltreatment-exposed children in the high neurocognitive vulnerability category had a 92.1% adjusted predicted probability of experiencing worsening symptoms over time. Furthermore, we found that children in the maltreatment-exposed group were more likely to fall into medium and high neurocognitive vulnerability categories than non-maltreated peers. These preliminary findings underscore the potential of using combined neurocognitive vulnerability metrics to identify maltreatment-exposed children at the increased risk for future mental health problems, supporting its role in prevention strategies. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: research tables/charts Journal Article ougenre: Article language: English refInfo: holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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