Tests of linear and nonlinear relations between cumulative contextual risk at birth and psychosocial problems during adolescence

Abstract This study tested whether there are linear or nonlinear relations between prenatal/birth cumulative risk and psychosocial outcomes during adolescence. Participants (n = 6963) were taken from the Northern Finland Birth Cohort Study 1986. The majority of participants did not experience any contextual risk factors around the time of the target child’s birth (58.1%). Even in this low-risk sample, cumulative contextual risk assessed around the time of birth was related to seven different psychosocial outcomes 16 years later. There was some evidence for nonlinear effects, but only for substance-related outcomes; however, the form of the association depended on how the cumulative risk index was calculated. Gender did not moderate the relation between cumulative risk and any of the adolescent psychosocial outcomes. Results highlight the potential value of using the cumulative risk framework for identifying children at birth who are at risk for a range of poor psychosocial outcomes during adolescence