Many adult mental health problems begin in childhood or adolescence. Research has found that individuals are at increased risk of poor mental health outcomes even in childhood and early adolescence. Those children who are at increased risk of childhood psychopathology are more likely to experience adverse early life conditions. Life history and life course models suggests that adverse early life conditions may increase their risk of poor mental health via cognitive dysregulation. However, most of previous studies focused on childhood maltreatment while ignored other indicators of harshness and unpredictability of early life conditions (e.g., inconsistent pattern of religiosity and parenting behaviors). Thus, the first aim of this project is to test how other indicators of harshness and unpredictability of early life conditions are associated with cognitive dysregulation, resulting in poor mental health outcomes in childhood and early adolescence.
In addition, non-heterosexual adolescents may be at greater risk of poorer mental health even in early childhood and adolescence compared with heterosexual adolescents, which cannot be fully explained by the common genetic influences, childhood gender nonconformity, and early life conditions. Instead, it is possible that psychological and “cognitive” factors (such as how one interprets the world, beliefs about the self, attention, and sense of autonomy) influence in part mental health outcomes in these adolescents. Thus, the second aim of this project is to test how cognitive factors in childhood and adolescence among non-heterosexual individuals influence their mental health outcomes.