McLaughlin Kubzansky Dunn 2010.

Using a combination of information from parent interviews and home visits, two independent raters rated five facets of the men’s childhood social environment (family cohesion, respondent’s relationship quality with his mother, father, and siblings, and a global impression of the home environment) on a scale from 1 (poor) to 5 (excellent). These scales were summed into a single composite of environmental strengths.

Raters performed a research study using information from home visits and interviews with parents. Two of these individuals rated different aspects of the child’s social environment. The following were analyzed: family cohesion, relationship with mother, relationship with father, relationship with siblings and general impression of the home. These categories were rated on a scale from 1 being poor to 5 being excellent. The results were collected and used to define environmental strengths. 

Exposure to adverse childhood experiences including maltreatment, family instability, and economic hardship are well-documented risk factors for psychopathology (Gilman et al. 2003; Green et al. 2010; Kessler et al. 1997). The finding that such adversities are associated with elevated risk for disorder onset not only in childhood, but also in adulthood (Green et al. 2010; Kessler et al. 1997), suggests that exposure to childhood adversity creates a generalized diathesis to psychopathology that persists across the life-course. 

Children that are exposed to adverse childhood experiences such as maltreatment, instability in the family, and poverty have proved to be risk factors for mental illness and/or various psychological disorders. In addition, this risk can have an impact not only in childhood but also in adulthood. This suggests that exposure to specific hardships during childhood years creates a higher chance for mental struggles that exist all through one’s lifetime. 

Compared to respondents with low emotional reactivity, a higher proportion of respondents with high emotional reactivity had parents whose SES was rated as working class/blue collar or lower-middle class and a lower proportion had childhood environments rated as excellent.

In comparison to individuals with a lower emotional reactivity, individuals with higher emotional reactivity had parents who were in the working class or lower middle class. There was a small number of these individuals that had childhood environments that were analyzed and rated as excellent. 

These results highlight the importance of understanding why childhood social circumstances are associated with later emotional reactivity. One possibility is that adverse childhood environments impact the development of physiological stress response systems (Loman and Gunnar 2010); indeed, accumulating evidence suggests that childhood adversity is associated with dysregulation in the autonomic nervous system and the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (Ellis et al. 2005; Heim et al. 2000; van der Vegt et al. 2009). 

The data found is very important as it highlights why the social circumstances of one’s childhood is majorly associated with their emotional reactivity late in life. Adverse childhood environments have an impact on the development of physiological stress response systems. There is even evidence that suggests that this adversity causes dysregulation in the nervous system and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal-axis in humans. 

Since this research was conducted so long ago and only had white males as participants, I think it would be important to do another study similar to this given all of the advancements society has made as well as finding a more diverse group of participants. That way, the data and results collected could be more accurate to the way our society looks now. I think it would also be beneficial to have a focus group of people that did not go to war as that could have had an impact on the results of this specific study.

The main thing that I did not understand about this paper that someone may be able to help me with is the information found in Table 2. It is my understanding that the data collected describes the childhood environment and the anxiety or mood disorder that had developed at different life stages. However, it seems like the data is described in statistical values (based on the words longitudinal association and two sided test) so I am not sure what the numbers themselves entirely mean.