Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Boston, MA, United States.
Erasmus Medical Center, The Generation R Study Group, Rotterdam, the Netherlands; Erasmus University, Department of Psychology, Education and Child Studies, Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
Soc Sci Med. 2021 May;277:113932. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.113932. Epub 2021 Apr 20.
Around the world, international migration and growing economic inequality have contributed to heightened perceptions of intergroup threat (i.e., feeling that people outside of one's social group are hostile to their physical or emotional well-being). Exposures related to intergroup threat, like negative intergroup contact, are inherently stressful and may contribute to higher levels of psychological distress in the population. This longitudinal study investigated whether maternal experiences of negative intergroup contact are related to poor mental health outcomes among ethnically diverse children in The Netherlands.
Data are from 4025 mother-child pairs in the Generation R Study, a multi-ethnic Dutch birth cohort initiated in 2005. Mothers' experiences of negative intergroup contact were assessed during pregnancy. Child mental health was indexed by problem behavior reported by parents and teachers using the Child Behavior Checklist. Linear mixed-effects models tested longitudinal associations of maternal-reported negative intergroup contact with child problem behavior reported by mothers at ages 3, 5, and 9 years, considering a range of potential confounders. Sensitivity analyses examined whether results were replicated using child data from other informants.
In fully adjusted models, higher levels of negative intergroup contact were associated with more problem behavior averaged across childhood for both non-Dutch (standardized B = 0.10, 95% CI = 0.05, 0.14) and Dutch children (standardized B = 0.12, 95% CI = 0.08, 0.15). Sensitivity analyses with data from other informants largely supported primary findings.
Comparable adverse intergenerational effects on mental health were observed among both ethnic minority and majority children whose mothers experienced negative intergroup contact. These findings suggest that ethnically divisive social contexts may confer widespread risks, regardless of a child's ethnic background. To our knowledge, this study is the first to examine exposures related to intergroup threat from an epidemiologic perspective and provides proof of principle that such exposures may be informative for population health.
在全球范围内，国际移民和日益增长的经济不平等导致人们对群体间威胁的感知加剧（即，感到群体外的人对自己的身体或情感健康怀有敌意）。与群体间威胁相关的暴露，如负面的群体间接触，本质上是有压力的，可能导致人群中更高水平的心理困扰。这项纵向研究调查了荷兰不同族裔儿童中，母亲经历的负面群体间接触是否与较差的心理健康结果有关。
数据来自 2005 年启动的多族裔荷兰出生队列研究——“生育研究”中的 4025 对母婴对。在怀孕期间评估了母亲经历的负面群体间接触。使用父母和教师报告的儿童行为检查表，以父母报告的儿童行为问题和教师报告的儿童行为问题来衡量儿童心理健康。线性混合效应模型检验了母亲报告的负面群体间接触与儿童 3 岁、5 岁和 9 岁时母亲报告的儿童行为问题之间的纵向关联，同时考虑了一系列潜在的混杂因素。敏感性分析检验了使用来自其他信息提供者的儿童数据是否复制了结果。
在完全调整的模型中，对于非荷兰裔（标准化 B=0.10，95%CI=0.05，0.14）和荷兰裔儿童（标准化 B=0.12，95%CI=0.08，0.15），较高水平的负面群体间接触与整个童年时期更多的行为问题相关。使用其他信息提供者的数据进行的敏感性分析在很大程度上支持了主要发现。
在母亲经历负面群体间接触的少数族裔和多数族裔儿童中，观察到了类似的对心理健康的不利代际影响。这些发现表明，无论儿童的种族背景如何，种族分裂的社会环境可能会带来广泛的风险。据我们所知，这项研究首次从流行病学角度研究了与群体间威胁相关的暴露，并提供了一个原理证明，即这种暴露可能对人群健康具有信息性。
