ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Child Adolesc. Psychiatry

Sec. Developmental Psychopathology and Mental Health

Volume 4 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/frcha.2025.1581135

Interactive Effect of Prenatal Adversity and COVID-19 Hardship on Youth Psychological Distress: A Longitudinal Study

Provisionally accepted
Yifan WangYifan Wang1,2Xinni WangXinni Wang3Francois Freddy AtebaFrancois Freddy Ateba1Chloé VoyerChloé Voyer4Alain BrunetAlain Brunet5Ashley WazanaAshley Wazana1,4*David P LaplanteDavid P Laplante1*
  • 1Lady Davis Institute (LDI), Montreal, Canada
  • 2École de psychoéducation, Faculté des arts et des sciences, Université de Montréal, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
  • 3State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning, Faculty of Psychology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, Beijing Municipality, China
  • 4Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, McGill University, Montréal, Quebec, Canada
  • 5Thompson Institute, University of the Sunshine Coast, Maroochydore, Queensland, Australia

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

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

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in severe loss of life and increased anxiety as well as fear worldwide. This study explored whether pre-pandemic exposure to varying levels of perinatal maternal adversity coupled with pandemic-related experiences are related to youth distress levels. Data from 119 youth (aged 9-17) and their mothers were analyzed to assess the interactive effects of perinatal maternal adversity and pandemic-related objective hardship on youth psychological distress. Youth-reported hardship models consistently explained more variance in their psychological distress. Youth-reported hardship, specifically daily life changes, predicted psychological distress, including PTSD symptoms and peritraumatic experiences during the pandemic. Youths exposed to high perinatal maternal socio-environmental adversity demonstrated resilience when faced with pandemic disruptions, suggesting that alignment between early adversity and later stress can mitigate distress during crises.

Keywords: COVID-19, Mental Health, resilience, longitudinal study, Early life adversity

Received: 21 Feb 2025; Accepted: 23 Jun 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Wang, Wang, Ateba, Voyer, Brunet, Wazana and Laplante. 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:
Ashley Wazana, Lady Davis Institute (LDI), Montreal, Canada
David P Laplante, Lady Davis Institute (LDI), Montreal, Canada

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.

Supplementary Material