Trends in uxoricide, filicide and parricide : a time series analysis

Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal

Self-harm and suicidal ideation among young people is more often recorded by child protection than health services in an Australian population cohort

OBJECTIVE: We investigated patterns of service contact for self-harm and suicidal ideation recorded by a range of human service agencies - including health, police and child protection - with specific focus on overlap and sequences of contacts, age of first contact and demographic and intergenerational characteristics associated with different service responses to self-harm.METHODS: Participants were 91,597 adolescents for whom multi-agency linked data were available in a longitudinal study of a population cohort in New South Wales, Australia. Self-harm and suicide-related incidents from birth to 18 years of age were derived from emergency department, inpatient hospital admission, mental health ambulatory, child protection and police administrative records. Descriptive statistics and binomial logistic regression were used to examine patterns of service contacts.RESULTS: Child protection services recorded the largest proportion of youth with reported self-harm and suicidal ideation, in which the age of first contact for self-harm was younger relative to other incidents of self-harm recorded by other agencies. Nearly 40% of youth with a health service contact for self-harm also had contact with child protection and/or police services for self-harm. Girls were more likely to access health services for self-harm than boys, but not child protection or police services.CONCLUSION: Suicide prevention is not solely the responsibility of health services; police and child protection services also respond to a significant proportion of self-harm and suicide-related incidents. High rates of overlap among different services responding to self-harm suggest the need for cross-agency strategies to prevent suicide in young people.</p

Linked lives: the role of the mother in the intergenerational transmission of aggression and antisocial behaviour

The current dissertation examines the role of the mother in the intergenerational transmission of aggression and antisocial behaviour. More specifically, the link between maternal juvenile delinquency, adult offending, and the development of children’s physical aggression in the early childhood period is investigated. This dissertation adopts a life-course framework to explore two particularly important life experiences that are especially relevant for many women: pregnancy and motherhood. Considering the negative adult outcomes that many female juvenile delinquents experience (e.g., social adversity, substance abuse, mental health problems), risky maternal behaviours during pregnancy, and difficulties with parenting are examined as potential mechanisms underlying the intergenerational transmission of antisocial behaviour. This dissertation consists of three distinct, yet related empirical studies based on a sample of mothers and their preschool children. The sample is drawn from the Vancouver Longitudinal Study on the Psychosocial Development of Children. Study I of this dissertation explored how mothers with a history of juvenile delinquency experience pregnancy. It was found that they are more likely to use substances while pregnant, and their children are more likely to be physically aggressive. Study II examined specific patterns of maternal parenting practices. It was found that these practices are linked with maternal adult offending, mental health problems (e.g., depressive and anxious symptoms), cultural background (non-Caucasian ethnicity), and children’s aggression. Study III focused on the persistence of children’s physical aggression during the preschool years, and found that maternal criminogenic, mental health and parenting factors are related to the development of children’s aggression. Importantly, cultural differences were found when comparing the predictors of children’s aggression for mothers born in North America and those born elsewhere. Taken together, the three studies suggest that there is significant intergenerational transmission of aggression and antisocial behaviour from mother to child, and it emerges from the earliest developmental periods. Moreover, important cultural differences were identified, which have several implications for policy and treatment

Intergenerational transmission of antisocial behaviour in childhood: findings from the New South Wales child development study

Increasing evidence suggests that the intergenerational transmission of antisocial behaviour begins from the earliest childhood developmental periods. This chapter presents findings on the role of parental offending on offspring developmental vulnerability in early childhood. Data were drawn from the New South Wales Child Development Study, a large Australian population-based, multi-agency, intergenerational study that utilises administrative record linkage of data from multiple sources (i.e., criminal justice, health, welfare, and education). The present chapter focuses on the associations between parental criminal offending and offspring outcomes at age 5 years as measured by the Australian Early Development Census (AEDC). The AEDC is a teacher-reported cross-sectional assessment that captured 99.9 per cent (N = 87,026) of the eligible New South Wales children entering kindergarten in the state of New South Wales in 2009, indexing early childhood developmental functioning across five domains (physical health and wellbeing, social competence, emotional maturity, language and cognitive development, and communication and general knowledge). Results showed that both maternal and paternal offending were associated with offspring vulnerability on all five of the AEDC domains as well as on the aggression subdomain, even after accounting for other important risk factors (e.g., child sex, socio-economic disadvantage). Findings suggest that the effects of parental offending may be pervasive in early childhood, with multiple developmental outcomes affected, especially cognitive functioning. A second record linkage was conducted in 2016 to bring data up to age 12 years for the children, and we plan to conduct follow-up studies with the cohort into adulthood using successive waves of record linkage

Intergenerational transmission of antisocial behaviour in childhood: findings from the New South Wales Child Development Study

This chapter presents information on the Family Transitions Project (FTP); a longitudinal, intergenerational study of families originally from rural areas of Iowa. The chapter also provides an overview of key findings from the FTP on the intergenerational transmission of antisocial behaviour and aggression. When the FTP began in 1989, it included families with a target child in the seventh grade. These targets have been followed for over 25 years and now have families and children of their own. The study includes information on three generations of study participants: the second generation target and their similarly aged sibling (G2), their first generation mother and father (G1), and the G2 target’s third generation child (G3). The initial years (1989-1994) of the study focused on the target’s family of origin. Beginning in 1995 (the first year the targets were out of high school), the focus of the study shifted to the target’s adult development, and data were collected on the G2 targets, their romantic partners, and their oldest biological G3 child (beginning in 1997). Findings from the FTP suggest that the intergenerational transmission of aggression and antisocial behaviours involves transactional processes that occur over time and across generations. For instance, parents’ aggression appears to negatively impact family socioeconomic status (SES), leading to fewer parenting and material investments in the next generation adolescent. In turn, fewer investments in the next generation adolescent are associated with higher levels of adolescent aggression, which then negatively impacts the next generation’s SES during adulthood as these processes repeat across generations

The intergenerational transmission of criminal offending behaviours (Report to the Criminology Research Council - Grant: CRG 19/14-15)

Background: Parental offending is associated with a wide-range of adverse outcomes in offspring, but the emphasis has been on examining the role of fathers on offspring offending in adolescence and adulthood. Little intergenerational research has been conducted in Australia on the relationship between maternal and paternal offending and diverse offspring developmental vulnerabilities in childhood. Aim: To determine the associations between parental offending histories and offspring developmental outcomes in a large population-based study of Australian children. This study focused on child outcomes in early and middle childhood, which are key developmental periods for intervention and prevention of antisocial behaviour and aggression. Method: Data were drawn from the New South Wales Child Development Study (NSW-CDS) cohort of 87,026 New South Wales children. The NSW-CDS is an intergenerational data linkage study combining information from cross-sectional surveys at age five and 11 years with administrative records. Analyses were conducted on the first two waves of record linkage conducted to date. Firstly, data were analysed from Record Linkage 1, to determine relationships between parental offending and a range of early childhood (age 5 years) offspring outcomes (i.e., social competence; emotional maturity; language and cognitive development; communication and general knowledge; physical health and wellbeing; and, aggressive behaviour). Secondly, using data from Record Linkage 2, the associations between parental offending and offspring conduct problems in middle childhood (age 11 years) were examined. Findings: Mothers with a history of offending experienced greater risk factors (e.g., socioeconomic disadvantage, mental illness, and offending partners) compared to non-offending mothers. Analyses revealed associations between parental offending and offspring vulnerabilities across a range of developmental domains in early childhood and conduct problems in middle childhood. In early childhood, associations were greatest for cognitive outcomes. Violent and frequent offending had a greater magnitude of association compared to nonviolent and infrequent offending. Both maternal and paternal offending histories were associated with adverse offspring outcomes at both developmental periods. Maternal offending initially seemed to have greater associations compared to paternal offending; however, once both parents’ offending was included in the models, the associations were similar. High levels of assortative mating were observed; the majority of mothers with a history of offending had a partner with a history of offending. Conclusions and Implications: Prevention and intervention efforts should start early in development, include mothers and fathers, and target both behavioural and cognitive problems in children. Future research should examine assortative mating among offending parents and how this influences the development of antisocial behaviour among offspring

Parental offending and children's conduct problems

Free to read on publisher's website The intergenerational transmission of criminality is well established. However, few intergenerational studies in Australia have examined the link between parents’ offending and their children’s behaviour. Even fewer have used large enough samples to examine serious maternal offending. This study uses a sample of over 21,000 Australian children and their parents to determine the prevalence and co-occurrence of offending among mothers and fathers, and the relationship between parental offending and children’s conduct problems at age 11. The study found that parental offending increases a child’s likelihood of conduct problems, and the offending most strongly associated with child conduct problems is maternal violent offending. It also found that the intergenerational transmission of antisocial behaviour begins early, highlighting the importance of intervention for at-risk children and programs targeted at mothers as well as fathers

Childhood developmental vulnerabilities associated with early life exposure to infectious and noninfectious diseases and maternal mental illness

Background Fetal exposure to infectious and noninfectious diseases may influence early childhood developmental functioning, on the path to later mental illness. Here, we investigated the effects of in utero exposure to maternal infection and noninfectious diseases during pregnancy on offspring developmental vulnerabilities at age 5 years, in the context of estimated effects for early childhood exposures to infectious and noninfectious diseases and maternal mental illness. Methods We used population data for 66,045 children from an intergenerational record linkage study (the New South Wales Child Development Study), for whom a cross‐sectional assessment of five developmental competencies (physical, social, emotional, cognitive, and communication) was obtained at school entry, using the Australian Early Development Census (AEDC). Child and maternal exposures to infectious or noninfectious diseases were determined from the NSW Ministry of Health Admitted Patients Data Collection (APDC) and maternal mental illness exposure was derived from both APDC and Mental Health Ambulatory Data collections. Multinomial logistic regression analyses were used to examine unadjusted and adjusted associations between these physical and mental health exposures and child developmental vulnerabilities at age 5 years. Results Among the physical disease exposures, maternal infectious diseases during pregnancy and early childhood infection conferred the largest associations with developmental vulnerabilities at age 5 years; maternal noninfectious illness during pregnancy also retained small but significant associations with developmental vulnerabilities even when adjusted for other physical and mental illness exposures and covariates known to be associated with early childhood development (e.g., child's sex, socioeconomic disadvantage, young maternal age, prenatal smoking). Among all exposures examined, maternal mental illness first diagnosed prior to childbirth conferred the greatest odds of developmental vulnerability at age 5 years. Conclusions Prenatal exposure to infectious or noninfectious diseases appear to influence early childhood physical, social, emotional and cognitive developmental vulnerabilities that may represent intermediate phenotypes for subsequent mental disorders

The Survey of School Promotion of Emotional and Social Health (SSPESH): A brief measure of the implementation of whole-school mental health promotion

This paper describes the development of a brief school-based instrument designed for use in research and in educational practice. The Survey of School Promotion of Emotional and Social Health differentiates states of high, moderate, and low implementation of whole-school policies and practices that promote the emotional and social health of students. The instrument measures the extent to which a school has implemented policies and practices in four health-promoting domains: (a) creating a positive school community, (b) teaching social and emotional skills, (c) engaging the parent community, and; (d) supporting students experiencing mental health difficulties. Responses were gathered via an online survey of Principals in almost 600 Australian primary schools in New South Wales. Preliminary psychometric properties of the instrument, and the development of an implementation index using latent class analysis, are described. The final 13-item version of the survey has broad applicability for use by researchers and evaluators for comparative and multivariate analyses. School leadership may find it useful as a brief tool to guide the identification of target areas for whole-school improvement across the four important health-promoting domains

Latent profiles of developmental schizotypy in the general population: Associations with childhood trauma and familial mental illness (Conference Abstract)

Background: Latent liability for schizophrenia (schizotypy) is expressed in various combinations of cognitive, psychological, and behavioural characteristics evident in the general population. Historical models propose that distinct classes of individuals expressing different forms of schizotypy may represent manifestations of differential levels of genetic and environmental risk for schizophrenia (or related illness). However, there has been little investigation of developmental models of schizotypy in childhood. Here, we sought to delineate latent profiles of schizotypy among children aged 11–12 years, and to examine associations between emerging schizotypal profiles and parental history of mental illness (as a proxy for genetic risk), early life trauma, and childhood contact with health services for mental illness up to age 13 years. Methods: Latent profiles of schizotypy were distinguished among 22,137 children (mean age=11.9 years) for whom intergenerational records of health service contact for mental illness and child protection reports were linked to the Middle Childhood Survey (MCS) within the NSW Child Development Study.1 Selected MCS items were used to index schizotypy across six domains (Unusual Experiences, Cognitive Disorganisation, Impulsive Nonconformity, Introversion, Dysphoria and Self-Other disturbance). Using Latent Profile Analyses (LPA), four groups emerged according to patterns of expression across these domains; membership of three putative schizotypy groups were examined in relation to the likelihood of being exposed to childhood maltreatment and parental mental illness, and the child’s own mental illness up to age 13 years, relative to the no risk group. Results: Four classes emerged from the LPA: (1) ‘schizotypy’ (n=1323; 6%); (2) ‘dysphoric pseudo-schizotypy’ (n=4261, 19%); (3) ‘introverted pseudoschizotypy’ (n=4473; 20%) and; (4) ‘no psychopathology’ (no-risk, n=12,080; 55%). Children in the schizotypy group had the greatest odds of being the subject of a child protection report (OR=2.9, 95% CI 2.6–3.3) and in contact with health services for mental illness by age 13 years (OR=2.7, 95% CI 2.2–3.3), relative to the no-risk group. The odds of child protection reports and childhood mental disorders were smaller, yet significantly increased, among dysphoric pseudo-schizotypy (ORs=1.9 and 1.8, respectively) and introverted pseudo-schizotypy (ORs=1.7 and 1.4, respectively), relative to the no-risk group. Parental mental illness exposure was greatest among the schizotypy (OR=2.3, 95% CI 2.0–2.6) subgroup, and was also increased in dysphoric pseudo-schizotypy (OR=1.6, 95% CI 1.5–1.8) and introverted pseudo-schizotypy (OR=1.4, 95% CI 1.3–1.5), relative to the no-risk group. Discussion: We provide evidence for distinct subtypes of children expressing different forms of schizotypy among a large Australian sample from the general population. The subgroup of children labeled ‘schizotypy’ (6%) characterized by high levels of cognitive disorganisation, impulsive non-conformity, introversion, and self-other disturbance may be at highest risk for developing schizophrenia or other mental illness in adulthood, and had a greater likelihood of childhood maltreatment and parental mental illness history, than other ‘pseudo-schizotypy’ groups