ArticleDevelopment and psychopathology2017
Maternal abuse history and reduced fetal heart rate variability: Abuse-related sleep disturbance is a mediator.
Article in Development and psychopathology, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 24 citations in OpenAlex.
- The impact of childhood trauma on psychological interventions for depression during pregnancy and postpartum: a systematic review.Archives of women's mental health · 2021Pooled it
- Parent-child relationship quality buffers the association between mothers' adverse childhood experiences and physiological synchrony.Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines · 2025Article
- Lifetime Violence and Perinatal Sleep Quality: A Scoping Review.Sleep science (Sao Paulo, Brazil) · 2025Review
- Childhood maltreatment exposure is differentially associated with transdiagnostic perinatal depression symptoms.Journal of affective disorders · 2024Article
- Patterns of maternal adverse childhood experiences and the intergenerational association of preschool children's emotional and behavioral problems.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2024Article
- Intergenerational Transmission of Maternal Childhood Maltreatment Prior to Birth: Effects on Human Fetal Amygdala Functional Connectivity.Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry · 2023Article
- Bringing the laboratory into the home: A protocol for remote biobehavioral data collection in pregnant women with emotion dysregulation and their infants.Journal of health psychology · 2022Article
- Charting a Course towards Resilience Following Adverse Childhood Experiences: Addressing Intergenerational Trauma via Strengths-Based Intervention.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Review
- Prenatal Developmental Origins of Future Psychopathology: Mechanisms and Pathways.Annual review of clinical psychology · 2019Review
- Family Dynamics in Sleep Health and Hypertension.Current hypertension reports · 2019Review
- The Association of Maternal Exposure to Domestic Violence During Childhood With Prenatal Attachment, Maternal-Fetal Heart Rate, and Infant Behavioral Regulation.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2018Article
- Thinking Across Generations: Unique Contributions of Maternal Early Life and Prenatal Stress to Infant Physiology.Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry · 2017Article
- Timeline of Intergenerational Child Maltreatment: the Mind-Brain-Body Interplay.Current psychiatry reports · 2017Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
The consequences of childhood maltreatment are profound and long lasting. Not only does the victim of abuse suffer as a child, but there is mounting evidence that a history of maltreatment places the next generation at risk for significant psychopathology. Research identifies postnatal factors as affecting this intergenerational transmission of trauma. However, emerging evidence suggests that part of this risk may be transmitted before birth, passed on via abuse-related alterations in the in utero environment that are as yet largely unidentified. To date, no study has directly assessed the influence of pregnant women's abuse history on fetal neurobehavioral development, nor considered trauma-associated poor sleep quality as a mediator reflecting established physiological dysregulation. Using data from 262 pregnant adolescents (ages 14-19), a population at elevated risk for childhood maltreatment, the current study examined maternal emotional abuse history and sleep quality in relation to third-trimester fetal resting heart rate variability, an index of parasympathetic nervous system functioning. The results indicate that maternal emotional abuse history is indirectly associated with lower fetal heart rate variability via abuse-related sleep disturbances. These data demonstrate an association between maternal abuse histories and fetal development, showing that at least part of the intergenerational transmission of risk occurs during pregnancy.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.