Heterogeneity in caregiving-related early adversity: Creating stable dimensions and subtypes

Early psychosocial adversities exist at many levels, including caregiving-related, extrafamilial, and sociodemographic, which despite their high interrelatedness may have unique impacts on development. In this paper, we focus on caregiving-related early adversities (crEAs) and parse the heterogeneit...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Development and psychopathology Vol. 34; no. 2; p. 621
Main Authors:	Nikolaidis, Aki, Heleniak, Charlotte, Fields, Andrea, Bloom, Paul A, VanTieghem, Michelle, Vannucci, Anna, Camacho, Nicolas L, Choy, Tricia, Gibson, Lisa, Harmon, Chelsea, Hadis, Syntia S, Douglas, Ian J, Milham, Michael P, Tottenham, Nim
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	United States 01-05-2022
Subjects:	Child Comorbidity Humans Mental Disorders - epidemiology Mental Health prediction caregiving related early adversities heterogeneity subtyping
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Summary:	Early psychosocial adversities exist at many levels, including caregiving-related, extrafamilial, and sociodemographic, which despite their high interrelatedness may have unique impacts on development. In this paper, we focus on caregiving-related early adversities (crEAs) and parse the heterogeneity of crEAs via data reduction techniques that identify experiential cooccurrences. Using network science, we characterized crEA cooccurrences to represent the comorbidity of crEA experiences across a sample of school-age children ( = 258; 6-12 years old) with a history of crEAs. crEA dimensions (variable level) and crEA subtypes (subject level) were identified using parallel factor analysis/principal component analysis and graph-based Louvain community detection. Bagging enhancement with cross-validation provided estimates of robustness. These data-driven dimensions/subtypes showed evidence of stability, transcended traditional sociolegally defined groups, were more homogenous than sociolegally defined groups, and reduced statistical correlations with sociodemographic factors. Finally, random forests showed both unique and common predictive importance of the crEA dimensions/subtypes for childhood mental health symptoms and academic skills. These data-driven outcomes provide additional tools and recommendations for crEA data reduction to inform precision medicine efforts in this area.
ISSN:	1469-2198
DOI:	10.1017/S0954579421001668