The Impact of Early Life Stress on Anxiety Symptoms in Late Adulthood

Abstract

Early life stress (ELS) may increase the risk of anxiety throughout the life course. Whether this effect extends to late adulthood is poorly known. In our study comprising 1872 participants from the Helsinki Birth Cohort Study born in 1934-1944, we investigated the association of various forms of ELS and their accumulation with self-reported anxiety symptoms at the age of 65-77 years. Data on childhood socioeconomic status and separation from parents were based on national registers for all participants. Information on self-reported emotional and physical trauma, parental divorce, and death of a family member in childhood was obtained from 1277 participants. We found that experiencing emotional trauma, physical trauma, and low socioeconomic status in childhood were associated with increased anxiety symptoms in late adulthood [B = 0.44 (95% CI = 0.31-0.58); B = 0.33 (95% CI = 0.20-0.46); B = 0.10 (95% CI = 0.01-0.19), respectively]. These associations remained significant even after controlling for other forms of ELS. Accumulation of early life stress also increased the levels of late-adulthood anxiety symptoms and the risk of anxiety regarded as clinically significant. Screening for potentially stressful childhood experiences in elderly populations may help identifying individuals with increased anxiety symptoms and planning preventive and therapeutic interventions for those exposed to ELS.

Figure 1

Accumulation of different types of ELS. The association between the accumulation of different ELS types and the standardized residual of the BAI score [in standard deviation (sd) units] after adjusting for age and sex as covariates. The accumulation of ELS is defined by the number of different stressful experience types in childhood (0−3 or more). Error bars represent the 95% confidence interval.

Figure 2

The association of childhood SES with late adulthood anxiety symptoms mediated by adulthood SES. SE represents standard errors. C represents the total effect of childhood SES on anxiety symptoms. Childhood SES no longer had a direct effect on anxiety symptoms when controlling for adulthood SES (c’). The indirect effect of childhood SES on anxiety symptoms through adulthood SES (ab) was β = 0.08 (95% CI 0.06–0.11, p < 0.001).