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. 2025 Jul 17:4:1581135.
doi: 10.3389/frcha.2025.1581135. eCollection 2025.

Interactive effects of prenatal adversity and COVID-19 hardship on youth psychological distress: a longitudinal study

Yifan Wang  1   2 , Xinni Wang  3 , Chloé Voyer  4 , Alain Brunet  5 , François Freddy Ateba  2 , Ashley Wazana  2   4 , David P Laplante  2
Affiliations

Interactive effects of prenatal adversity and COVID-19 hardship on youth psychological distress: a longitudinal study

Yifan Wang et al. Front Child Adolesc Psychiatry. .

Abstract

Introduction: 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.

Methods: 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.

Results: 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.

Discussion: 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; early life adversity; longitudinal study; mental health; resilience.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Effect of perinatal social-environmental adversity (A Factor) and mother-reported objective hardship on youth outcomes. Positive slopes indicate increased distress with higher hardship among low-A-Factor youth, while negative slopes suggest attenuation among high-A-Factor youth. (A) For youth exposed to high A Factor, psychological distress diminished as maternal objective hardship increased. (B) For youth exposed to higher A Factor, PTSD symptoms diminished as maternal objective hardship increased. (C) Higher PDEQ is associated with higher maternal objective hardship. (D) For youth exposed to low A Factor, peritraumatic distress diminished as maternal objective hardship decreased (*p < 0.05).
Figure 2
Figure 2
Effect of prenatal affective adversity (M Factor) and youth-reported objective hardship on youth outcomes. Positive slopes indicate increased distress with higher hardship among low-M-Factor youth, while negative slopes suggest attenuation among high-M-Factor youth. (A) Higher youth objective hardship is associated with higher youth psychological distress. (B) Higher youth objective hardship is associated with more PTSD symptoms. (C) Higher youth objective hardship is associated with higher peritraumatic distress. (D) For youth exposed to low or moderate M factor levels, peritraumatic dissociative experiences increased as youth objective hardship increased (*p < 0.05).
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