Department of Clinical Psychology, School of Health in Social Science, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK.
Department of Psychosocial Science, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway.
Soc Psychiatry Psychiatr Epidemiol. 2023 Jul;58(7):1065-1073. doi: 10.1007/s00127-023-02433-z. Epub 2023 Feb 17.
Associations between prenatal earthquake exposure and children's mental health remain unclear. Moreover, there is a paucity of research using quasi-experimental statistical techniques to diminish potential selection bias. Thus, this study aimed to explore the impact of prenatal exposure to the Chilean earthquake of 2010 on children's behavioural and emotional problems between 1½ and 3 years old using propensity score matching.
Participants included 1549 families from the Encuesta Longitudinal de la Primera Infancia cohort in Chile. Maternal reports using the Child Behaviour Checklist (CBCL) were used to assess behavioural and emotional problems between 1½ and 3 years old. Information on prenatal earthquake exposure was collected via maternal report. The Kernel matching estimator was used to compare the average treatment effects of children who were exposed to the earthquake compared to those who were not.
Five of the seven CBCL outcomes were statistically significant after matching and adjustment for multiple testing, suggesting greater difficulties for exposed children which included emotional reactivity, anxious/depressed, sleep problems, attention problems, and aggression (mean difference of 0.69, 0.87, 0.73, 0.85, 3.51, respectively). The magnitude of the effect was small to medium.
Findings contribute to the potential causal inferences between prenatal earthquake exposure and increased behavioural and emotional problems in early childhood. Results suggest that in utero experiences may have long-term consequences for infants' well-being, supporting the need for specific interventions in pregnancy after natural disasters.
产前地震暴露与儿童心理健康之间的关联仍不清楚。此外，利用准实验统计技术来减少潜在选择偏差的研究很少。因此，本研究旨在使用倾向评分匹配法，探讨 2010 年智利地震对 1.5 至 3 岁儿童行为和情绪问题的影响。
参与者包括智利第一婴儿纵向调查队列中的 1549 个家庭。使用儿童行为检查表（CBCL）对 1.5 至 3 岁儿童的行为和情绪问题进行了母亲报告。通过母亲报告收集了产前地震暴露的信息。使用核匹配估计器比较了暴露于地震的儿童与未暴露于地震的儿童的平均治疗效果。
在匹配和多重检验调整后，CBCL 的七个结果中有五个具有统计学意义，这表明暴露于地震的儿童存在更大的困难，包括情绪反应性、焦虑/抑郁、睡眠问题、注意力问题和攻击行为（平均差异分别为 0.69、0.87、0.73、0.85、3.51）。效应的大小为小到中等。
这些发现有助于在产前地震暴露与儿童早期行为和情绪问题之间建立潜在的因果关系。结果表明，子宫内的经历可能对婴儿的幸福有长期影响，这支持了在自然灾害后对孕妇进行特定干预的必要性。
