Environmental Effects on Mental Health – Social Deprivation

Quoted Text: 
Briefly, children were enrolled in the study between 6–31 months and, after completing baseline assessments, 136 institutionally-reared children were randomly assigned to either high-quality foster care or care-as-usual at an average age of 22 months by drawing names from a hat. Table S1 shows baseline characteristics and difference between the care-as-usual and foster care groups. Moreover, an age- and sex-matched sample of 72 children who had never experienced institutionalization and who were reared in their biological families were recruited as a comparison group.

Translation: 

The ages of the children who were enrolled in the study were between 6 and 31 months. Initial tests were completed on the children to ensure they were able to successfully participate in the study without affecting the results. Of the children who were tested, 136 children raised in institutional care were randomly chosen to begin high-quality foster care or remain in institutional care at around 22 months old. Their names were drawn from a hat to ensure randomness. 72 children of the same sex and age who were raised by their own families were included to compare with the children in institutional and foster care.

Quoted Text: 

In the current study, we used data from a longitudinal RCT of foster care for children reared in psychosocially deprived Romanian institutions to examine whether the pattern of stress sensitization frequently observed for psychopathology could be detected for behavioural and neural measures of EF in adolescence. We also examined whether family-based care protected against this stress-sensitizing effect in an experimental design.

Translation: 

In this study, we used data from a long-term study where people are randomly assigned to different test groups to see what happens to them over time. This was done for children raised in Romanian care institutions known for lacking mental and emotional support. We examined whether the way stress made children more vulnerable to mental health problems was also linked to them becoming more sensitive to stress in their thinking skills and brain activity during their teenage years. We also examined whether children being raised by their own families protected them against these stress effects, in an experimental design.

Quoted Text: 

These results suggest that prolonged early deprivation sensitizes individuals to later SLEs with respect to EF and MFTP, whereas SLEs are not associated with EF or MFTP among those without a history of deprivation or those removed from deprived environments and placed into family care early in development.

Translation: 

These results suggest that depriving children of social interaction makes them more sensitive to stressful life events during adolescence, specifically referring to their patterns of thinking and adaptive behaviour, as represented by executive functioning and medial frontal theta power, respectively. Children who do not experience social deprivation or were removed from socially deprived environments early on in their development do not have more sensitive thinking patterns or adaptive behaviour in response to stressful life events.

Quoted Text: 

This study provides preliminary evidence for the stress-sensitizing effect of prolonged early-life deprivation on EF difficulties in adolescence and, perhaps most compellingly, the capacity of family-based care to buffer this association. However, results were generally not robust to correction for multiple tests and thus need to be interpreted cautiously and replicated in larger samples.

Translation: 

This study provides preliminary evidence that prolonged social deprivation in early life makes individuals more sensitive to stress in adolescence. It also depicts how family-based care can prevent them from developing this sensitivity to stressful life events. However, the results were not deemed reliable when statistical significance tests were executed; the results must not be interpreted literally and should be replicated with a larger study sample for improved accuracy and reliability.

As mentioned in the study, this research should be replicated with a larger study sample. It should also be executed with children from several different countries, rather than just Romania, as different cultural and social norms may impact the response to stressful events. Preferably, it should follow the children into adulthood rather than just adolescence to see how these changes affect their long-term mental health and overall functioning in life. The ethical considerations of this style of research should also be considered to see if the research methods can be reworked to be more ethically sound. These changes will help to improve the generalizability of the results, meaning that the conclusions made from follow-up studies can be used to improve real-life interventions and guide police on child welfare.

The part that I found most challenging was the study measures (SLE, EF, & MFTP). Not only was it difficult to understand how the researchers developed those measures, but when they referred to them in different parts of the article, it was difficult to understand how they fit into the specific context of certain sections. It required a lot of outside research to understand what the specific meaning of every measure meant for the outcome of the overall study.