Interpersonal adversity and health across the life course

Partner violence is associated with a wide range of negative outcomes, including poorer physical health in the form of increased risk for acute injuries, chronic disease onset, and premature mortality. Importantly, exposure to partner violence is not limited to adulthood and can be embedded within a larger context of interpersonal adversity extending from childhood into older age. In this review, we summarize recent research linking interpersonal adversity to poor health across the life course, focusing on psychosocial, behavioral, and physiological mechanisms relevant to health. We first highlight the importance of embedding the experience of partner violence and health into a broader context of interpersonal adversity spanning the life course. We then outline links from childhood interpersonal adversity to psychosocial and physiological dysfunction in adulthood, including a specific focus on recent studies examining emotion regulation, coping, attachment styles, and health behaviors. We next examine the current evidence linking interpersonal adversity to health-relevant psychosocial and physiological outcomes, including among older adults. In this section, we highlight recent findings linking interpersonal adversity to neural mechanisms, cognition, immune function, and accelerated biological aging. We end our review by identifying limitations of the current literature studying how interpersonal adversity could affect later health and present causal inference methodologies that could help address these challenges.