Editorial: Temporally Dynamic Perspectives on Risk in the Development of Psychopathology: Moving Toward the Identification of Risk Trajectories

Abstract

Internalizing problems contribute to significant distress and despair across the lifespan,¹ as well as risk for suicide death. Understanding their associated patterns of development, especially in early life, could be key to identifying novel, upstream preventive and interventional strategies. Stressors and early seeds of dysfunction in the first phases of life, particularly during sensitive periods of developmental organization, can have powerful, lasting consequences across multiple levels of functioning.² These cascade-inducing effectors are dynamic, and they are attuned to their particular contexts. For example, risk confined to a circumscribed period of development may differ from more extended, chronic disturbances.³ When early patterns of functioning are considered, their variability across development may likewise provide insight into their embedding into models, relationships, and circuits that will be carried forward and possibly eventuate to negative outcomes. Therefore, modeling risk as a dynamic process, particularly in the language of trajectories, may best capture the effects on patterns of ontogenesis.