Mental Health
Psychosocial influencers of mental health and cognitive abilities in children of MAASTHI cohort in Urban India. Giridhara Rathnaiah Babu* Giridhara Rathnaiah Babu Siddhartha Mandal Shwetha Dixit Deepa R Debarati Mukherjee Prashanth NS Eunice Lobo, Suganya Rajendran, Amit Prakash, Smita Todkar, Astha Yadav, Jyothi Menon, Aditi Rao, Poornima Prabhakaran, Gauri Divan, Supriya Bhavnani, Prashant Thankachan, Sumathi Swaminathan
Introduction: Over 182 million children worldwide face risks that jeopardize their healthy development, with India accounting for the highest number (64.3 million) of children developing sub-optimally. The COINCIDE project aims to explore the combined effects of various psychosocial factors on children’s cognition and mental health.
Methods: In 985 mother-child dyads within MAASTHI cohort, we assessed maternal mental health, maternal adversity, intimate partner violence (IPV), Family Care Indicator (FCI), Childhood Psychosocial Adversity Scale (CPAS) and the Child-Parent Relationship (CPRS). Children’s mental health was assessed using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ). Cognitive performance, including fluid intelligence and non-verbal reasoning, was measured using Raven’s Coloured Progressive Matrices (RCPM). Ridge regression was implemented to assess the joint effects using the R package ridge.
Results: In children with mean age of 5.35 years, FCI (β = 2.25) and high conflict relationship (β= 1.55) positively influenced cognitive performance. CPAS (β = 0.40) and IPV (β = 0.26) were positively associated with SDQ internalising behaviour, while a high closeness in relationship (β = -0.43) was negatively associated. CPAS (β = 0.52), and high conflict relationship (β = 0.99) showed significant positive associations with SDQ externalising behaviour while high closeness in the relationship (β = -0.37) and maternal depressive symptoms (β = -0.31) had a negative impact.
Conclusion: High-conflict relationships consistently predicted increased behavioural difficulties and lower cognitive performance. Conversely, high closeness in relationships mitigates internalizing and externalising behaviours, suggesting the protective role of a positive parent-child bond. IPV and CPAS significantly contributed to behavioural difficulties, underlining the importance of addressing domestic violence and social stressors in interventions aimed at improving child mental health.