Profiles of Early Life Stress and Their Interaction With Proximal Stress in Early Adulthood: A Person-Centered...

Adverse effects of early life stress (ELS) exposure are well-documented, but the joint effects of multiple exposures to different types of ELS (e.g., abuse, neglect, family dysfunction, maladaptive parenting) and their interaction with more proximal stress in adulthood remains less understood. To bridge this gap, we used a person-centered approach to identify distinct patterns of exposure to ELS (i.e., ELS profiles) and examined whether they interact with proximal stress to explain variability in mental health outcomes.

367 young adults completed questionnaires assessing their exposure to ELS (i.e., abuse, neglect, family dysfunction, maladaptive parenting), proximal stress (COVID-19-related stressors), and stress-related mental health outcomes (e.g., mood and posttraumatic stress symptoms, alcohol use). We conducted latent profile analyses to uncover ELS profiles and regression-based moderation analyses to examine their interactions with COVID-19 stress.

We identified three profiles: Profile 1 (n = 286) with low ELS exposure; Profile 2 (n = 66) with high emotional maltreatment and elevated physical maltreatment, family dysfunction, and parental affectionless control; and Profile 3 (n = 15) with extremely high childhood maltreatment (particularly sexual abuse), parental affectionless control, and normative family dysfunction. These profiles interacted with COVID-19 stress to explain variability in mood symptoms and alcohol use, suggesting sensitizing effects of ELS.

The identified profiles and their interaction with COIVD-19 stress shed light on the cumulative and interactive effects of exposure to multiple stressors across the lifespan that could help identify vulnerabilities for stress-related psychological problems.