Longitudinal intergenerational patterns of psychopathology in a population-based dataset: an ABCD study

To identify longitudinal trajectories of clinically relevant psychopathology from middle childhood to early adolescence and to examine the extent to which parental psychopathology influences child psychopathology trajectories.

Participants were children and biological parents enrolled in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study (N=11,142) with up to five annual assessments of psychopathology using the Child Behavior Checklist and the Adult Self Report. Sequential latent class analysis identified longitudinal trajectories based on clinically elevated subscale scores (T-score≥65). Cross-lagged panel models examined bidirectional associations between parent and child internalizing and externalizing symptoms across development, including separate analyses of mother-child and father-child dyads.

The majority of the sample (76.1%) showed stable psychopathology trajectories (67.9% low, 6.8% moderate, 1.3% high) of clinically elevated symptom endorsement. Nearly one-quarter of participants (21.9%) transitioned between trajectory classes over time (9.9% improved, 8.1% worsened, 5.9% fluctuating). Greater parental psychopathology was associated with increased odds of membership in the moderate- and high-symptom trajectory classes (ORs=1.28-2.61, p<0.001). Among 10,633 biological parent-child dyads, maternal internalizing symptoms demonstrated the strongest longitudinal associations with child internalizing symptoms 2-years later (standardized cross-lagged path β = 0.128, 95% CI = 0.094-0.161, p<0.001). Findings remained robust across sensitivity analyses.

These findings provide novel insight into population-level trends of psychopathology trajectories and the importance of understanding how parental psychopathology influences child psychopathology over the course of development. This study highlights the importance of maternal psychopathology as a risk factor for child psychopathology elevations across development.