ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Child Adolesc. Psychiatry
Sec. Developmental Psychopathology and Mental Health
Volume 4 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/frcha.2025.1568829
This article is part of the Research TopicPsychopathological and behavioral trajectories in transitional-age youth: Innovative approaches and paradigmsView all 9 articles
Indicators of Resource Scarcity Differentially Moderate the Impact of Threat Exposure on Psychopathology in a Cross-Sectional Community Sample of Youth
Provisionally accepted
- Indiana University, Bloomington, United States
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Threat exposure and resource scarcity increase psychopathology risk throughout childhood and adolescence. However, it remains unclear whether these dimensions of early life adversity interact to impact psychopathology, whether different indicators of resource scarcity perform similarly in such interactions, and whether these relationships are similar between males and females. This analysis used a cross-sectional, multi-informant approach to investigate interactions between threat exposure and different indicators of resource scarcity (achievementbased, financial-based) for three major dimensions of psychopathology. Data are from 236 community-based non-help seeking youth aged 8-17 (M=11.58, SD=2.74) enrolled in the census-matched Nathan Kline Institute-Rockland Sample. Linear models were used to estimate interactions between threat exposure, and achievement-based scarcity (caregiver education and occupation) versus financial-based scarcity (income-to-needs ratio), for major dimensions of psychopathology (internalizing, externalizing, thought disturbance). Linear models showed increasing threat exposure was associated with elevated internalizing and externalizing psychopathology symptoms, but not thought disturbance symptoms, when controlling for resource scarcity indicators. Achievement-based scarcity, but not financial-based scarcity, moderated these relationships, such that the impact of threat exposure on psychopathology depended on the level of caregiver achievement moreso than on the amount of familial financial resources. These patterns were similar in males (N=132) and females (N=104) when examined separately. Caregiver achievement may protect against symptoms of psychopathology in youth exposed to threat, suggesting that policies geared towards increasing education accessibility and job opportunities may have considerable downstream impact for child and adolescent well-being.Future work should explore interactions between adversity dimensions in population-based samples with greater variability in systems-level factors (e.g., neighborhood advantage).
Keywords: Early life adversity, adolescence, threat, Scarcity, Dimensional psychopathology
Received: 30 Jan 2025; Accepted: 29 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Larson, Moussa-Tooks and Wisner. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Eric Larson, Indiana University, Bloomington, United States
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.