Adverse Childhood Experiences: Developmental Psychopathology, Mechanisms, Identification, and Interventions

Mental health has shown concerning trends globally in recent years, posing major challenges for clinical care in child, adolescent, and young adult psychiatry. The rapid increase in mental disorders points to strong environmental determinants that cannot be explained by genetic mechanisms alone. The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) framework provides a widely used orientation for categorizing childhood stressors and offers a rapidly developing evidence base linking early adversity to neurobiological changes, developmental psychopathology, and later mental and behavioral outcomes. Although it is well established that ACEs are associated with adverse adult outcomes, the mechanisms of these long-term effects require further examination with a developmental focus. Recent advances clarify stress physiology and risk/resilience mechanisms, yet gaps persist in early identification, routine screening, care transitions, and intervention implementation across perinatal, pediatric, school-based, community, and youth/young adult services. Evidence is also growing on intergenerational pathways—how parental ACEs and PTSD affect caregiving, biological embedding, and child outcomes—although key mechanisms remain incompletely understood.

The goal of this Research Topic is to extend knowledge about prevention, screening and diagnostics, mechanisms, short- and long-term consequences, and interventions from early childhood through emerging adulthood (up to age 26). A particular emphasis will be placed on opportunities for child, adolescent, and youth-serving care providers (including school, primary care, community, and early adult services) to identify at-risk youth early and intervene appropriately. We also invite work that addresses obstacles and effective strategies for detection and diagnostic pathways for childhood trauma, with a focus on improving transitions between services (e.g., from obstetrics/pediatrics to adolescent or early adult care) and supporting real-world implementation. In addition, this Research Topic aims to clarify intergenerational processes, including the transmission of ACEs and PTSD starting in the perinatal period, where pathways and moderators are not yet well characterized.

We welcome Original Research, Review, Systematic Review, Mini Review, Brief Research Report, Hypothesis & Theory, Perspective, Policy & Practice Reviews, and Case Report submissions on themes including:

• Endocrine and neurobiological findings related to ACEs, including studies that help elucidate mechanisms of risk and resilience across development into emerging adulthood.
• Prevention, screening, detection, and diagnostic assessment of childhood trauma in clinical care, with attention to barriers and opportunities for improvement (in obstetrics, pediatric, early intervention, school-based, community, and youth/young adult services, e.g., ages 18–26; transitions of care).
• Innovative therapeutic interventions and evaluations (e.g., trauma-informed approaches; family-based and psychotherapeutic methods), with clinical relevance for practice.
• Intergenerational transmission of adversity and PTSD, including studies on mechanisms and moderators, and implications for preconception and early parenting in emerging adults.
• Household dysfunction and parent–child interaction, with special interest in therapeutic interventions and analytic approaches such as video-based microanalysis; and studies of early caregiving, attachment, and aggression trajectories with follow-up into emerging adulthood.
• Longitudinal studies of early-life stress and developmental or adult outcomes, including designs across the first two decades of life, with follow-up into emerging adulthood (up to age 26).
• School- and campus-based preventive and intervention efforts, including approaches that strengthen stress resilience and emotion regulation in children, adolescents, and young adults.
• Reports on dysfunctional coping and comorbid risk behaviors (e.g., substance use) in the context of ACEs, including implications for prevention and treatment.
• Outcomes focused on mental and behavioral health from childhood through emerging adulthood, including PTSD, anxiety, phobias, insomnia, mood disorders, depression, and other behavioral health impacts, as well as related clinical, functional, and quality-of-life outcomes.
• Cognitive and socioemotional development affected by early adversity, including domains such as memory, attention, executive function, and the ability to process and regulate emotions.
• Sociocultural and structural determinants (e.g., poverty, racial/ethnic discrimination) and cross-national perspectives that inform mechanisms, access, and outcomes.

This Research Topic centers on child and adolescent developmental psychopathology and clinical care, including emerging adulthood as a developmental extension or transition. We welcome studies examining adverse childhood experiences in parents as determinants of child and adolescent outcomes via intergenerational, caregiving, biological, and social mechanisms. However, if your submission focuses primarily on parents’/adults’ mental health and adult treatment without a central link to child or adolescent outcomes or developmental processes, it will be considered out of scope for this Research Topic.

Submissions should articulate implications for clinical practice in child, adolescent, family and young adult psychiatry and, where relevant, identify gaps in diagnosis and care.

If you are not an invited author but would like to submit a paper to this Research Topic, please email us at childandadolescentpsychiatry@frontiersin.org with the title or general theme of your work and any questions you may have.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Classification
• Clinical Trial
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Classification
• Clinical Trial
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Review
• Study Protocol
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: Early Life Stress, Household dysfunction, Post-traumatic Stress Disorder, Child Maltreatment, Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Adverse Childhood Experiences, Emerging Adulthood, Young Adult Mental Health, Transition of Care

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.