Credit scores, cardiovascular disease risk, and human capital.

Credit scores are the most widely used instruments to assess whether or not a person is a financial risk. Credit scoring has been so successful that it has expanded beyond lending and into our everyday lives, even to inform how insurers evaluate our health. The pervasive application of credit scoring has outpaced knowledge about why credit scores are such useful indicators of individual behavior.

Mental health antecedents of early midlife insomnia: evidence from a four-decade longitudinal study.

Study Objectives: Insomnia is a highly prevalent condition that constitutes a major public health and economic burden. However, little is known about the developmental etiology of adulthood insomnia.

Design: We examined whether indicators of psychological vulnerability across multiple developmental periods (psychiatric diagnoses in young adulthood and adolescence, childhood behavioral problems, and familial psychiatric history) predicted subsequent insomnia in adulthood.

Using self-reported callous-unemotional traits to cross-nationally assess the DSM-5 'With Limited Prosocial Emotions' specifier.

Background: The presence of callous-unemotional (CU) traits designates an important subgroup of antisocial youth at risk for severe, persistent, and impairing conduct problems. As a result, the fifth revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual includes a specifier for youth meeting diagnostic criteria for Conduct Disorder who show elevated CU traits. The current study evaluated the DSM-5 criteria using Item Response Theory (IRT) analyses and evaluated two methods for using a self-report measure of CU traits to make this diagnosis.

The p Factor: One General Psychopathology Factor in the Structure of Psychiatric Disorders?

Mental disorders traditionally have been viewed as distinct, episodic, and categorical conditions. This view has been challenged by evidence that many disorders are sequentially comorbid, recurrent/chronic, and exist on a continuum. Using the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study, we examined the structure of psychopathology, taking into account dimensionality, persistence, co-occurrence, and sequential comorbidity of mental disorders across 20 years, from adolescence to midlife.

Perinatal complications and aging indicators by midlife.

Background: Perinatal complications predict increased risk for morbidity and early mortality. Evidence of perinatal programming of adult mortality raises the question of what mechanisms embed this long-term effect. We tested a hypothesis related to the theory of developmental origins of health and disease: that perinatal complications assessed at birth predict indicators of accelerated aging by midlife.

Is insomnia associated with deficits in neuropsychological functioning? Evidence from a population-based study.

Study Objectives: People with insomnia complain of cognitive deficits in daily life. Results from empirical studies examining associations between insomnia and cognitive impairment, however, are mixed. Research is needed that compares treatment-seeking and community-based insomnia study samples, measures subjective as well as objective cognitive functioning, and considers participants' pre-insomnia cognitive function.

Is chronic asthma associated with shorter leukocyte telomere length at midlife?

Rationale: Asthma is prospectively associated with age-related chronic diseases and mortality, suggesting the hypothesis that asthma may relate to a general, multisystem phenotype of accelerated aging.

Objectives: To test whether chronic asthma is associated with a proposed biomarker of accelerated aging, leukocyte telomere length.

Methods: Asthma was ascertained prospectively in the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study cohort (n = 1,037) at nine in-person assessments spanning ages 9-38 years.

Can Childhood Factors Predict Workplace Deviance?

Compared to the more common focus on street crime, empirical research on workplace deviance has been hampered by highly select samples, cross-sectional research designs, and limited inclusion of relevant predictor variables that bear on important theoretical debates. A key debate concerns the extent to which childhood conduct-problem trajectories influence crime over the life-course, including adults' workplace crime, whether childhood low self-control is a more important determinant than trajectories, and/or whether each or both of these childhood factors relate to later criminal activity. This paper provides evidence on this debate by examining two types of workplace deviance: production and property deviance separately for males and females.

Community Water Fluoridation and Intelligence: Prospective Study in New Zealand.

Objectives. This study aimed to clarify the relationship between community water fluoridation (CWF) and IQ. Methods.

Assessing conscientious personality in primary care: an opportunity for prevention and health promotion.

The articles in this special section bolster the already strong evidence base that personality differences in the trait of conscientiousness predict health. What is now needed is a research agenda for translating documented risk associations between low conscientiousness and poor health into policies and interventions that improve health outcomes for individuals and populations. In this commentary, we highlight 1 such avenue: introducing brief personality assessment into primary care practice.

Translating personality psychology to help personalize preventive medicine for young adult patients.

The rising number of newly insured young adults brought on by health care reform will soon increase demands on primary care physicians. Physicians will face more young adult patients, which presents an opportunity for more prevention-oriented care. In the present study, we evaluated whether brief observer reports of young adults' personality traits could predict which individuals would be at greater risk for poor health as they entered midlife.

The global burden of conduct disorder and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder in 2010.

Objective: The Global Burden of Disease Study 2010 (GBD 2010) is the first to include conduct disorder (CD) and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) for burden quantification.

Method: A previous systematic review pooled the available epidemiological data for CD and ADHD, and predicted prevalence by country, region, age and sex for each disorder. Prevalence was then multiplied by a disability weight to calculate years lived with disability (YLDs).

Polygenic risk and the development and course of asthma: an analysis of data from a four-decade longitudinal study.

Background: Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have discovered genetic variants that predispose individuals to asthma. To integrate these new discoveries with emerging models of asthma pathobiology, we aimed to test how genetic discoveries relate to developmental and biological characteristics of asthma.

Methods: In this prospective longitudinal study, we investigated a multilocus profile of genetic risk derived from published GWAS of asthma case status.

Internalizing disorders and leukocyte telomere erosion: a prospective study of depression, generalized anxiety disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder.

There is evidence that persistent psychiatric disorders lead to age-related disease and premature mortality. Telomere length has emerged as a promising biomarker in studies that test the hypothesis that internalizing psychiatric disorders are associated with accumulating cellular damage. We tested the association between the persistence of internalizing disorders (depression, generalized anxiety disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder) and leukocyte telomere length (LTL) in the prospective longitudinal Dunedin Study (n=1037).

Childhood exposure to violence and lifelong health: clinical intervention science and stress-biology research join forces.

Many young people who are mistreated by an adult, victimized by bullies, criminally assaulted, or who witness domestic violence react to this violence exposure by developing behavioral, emotional, or learning problems. What is less well known is that adverse experiences like violence exposure can lead to hidden physical alterations inside a child's body, alterations that may have adverse effects on life-long health. We discuss why this is important for the field of developmental psychopathology and for society, and we recommend that stress-biology research and intervention science join forces to tackle the problem.

Is childhood cruelty to animals a marker for physical maltreatment in a prospective cohort study of children?

Childhood cruelty to animals is thought to indicate that a child may have been maltreated. This study examined: (a) prevalence of cruelty to animals among 5- to 12-year-old children; (b) the association between cruelty to animals, child physical maltreatment, and adult domestic violence; and (c) whether cruelty to animals is a marker of maltreatment taking into account age, persistence of cruelty, and socioeconomic disadvantage. Data were from the Environmental Risk (E-Risk) Longitudinal Twin Study, an epidemiological representative cohort of 2,232 children living in the United Kingdom.

Childhood maltreatment, juvenile disorders and adult post-traumatic stress disorder: a prospective investigation.

Background: We examine prospectively the influence of two separate but potentially inter-related factors in the etiology of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD): childhood maltreatment as conferring a susceptibility to the PTSD response to adult trauma and juvenile disorders as precursors of adult PTSD.

Method: The Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study (DMHDS) is a birth cohort (n = 1037) from the general population of New Zealand's South Island, with multiple assessments up to age 38 years. DSM-IV PTSD was assessed among participants exposed to trauma at ages 26-38.

Safe, stable, nurturing relationships break the intergenerational cycle of abuse: a prospective nationally representative cohort of children in the United Kingdom.

Purpose: To identify contextual and interpersonal factors that distinguish families in which the intergenerational transmission of maltreatment is maintained from families in which the cycle is broken.

Methods: The sample was composed of 1,116 families in the United Kingdom who participated in the Environmental Risk (E-Risk) Longitudinal Twin Study. We assessed mother's childhood history of maltreatment retrospectively with a validated and reliable interview.

Microvascular abnormality in schizophrenia as shown by retinal imaging.

Objective: Retinal and cerebral microvessels are structurally and functionally homologous, but unlike cerebral microvessels, retinal microvessels can be noninvasively measured in vivo by retinal imaging. The authors tested the hypothesis that individuals with schizophrenia exhibit microvascular abnormality and evaluated the utility of retinal imaging as a tool for schizophrenia research.

Method: Participants were members of the Dunedin Study, a population-representative cohort followed from birth with 95% retention.

Neuropsychological decline in schizophrenia from the premorbid to the postonset period: evidence from a population-representative longitudinal study.

Objective: Despite the widespread belief that neuropsychological decline is a cardinal feature of the progression from the premorbid stage to the chronic form of schizophrenia, few longitudinal studies have examined change in neuropsychological functioning from before to after illness onset. The authors examined whether neuropsychological decline is unique to schizophrenia, whether it is generalized or confined to particular mental functions, and whether individuals with schizophrenia also have cognitive problems in everyday life.

Method: Participants were members of a representative cohort of 1,037 individuals born in Dunedin, New Zealand, in 1972 and 1973 and followed prospectively to age 38, with 95% retention.

Is obesity associated with a decline in intelligence quotient during the first half of the life course?

Cross-sectional studies have found that obesity is associated with low intellectual ability and neuroimaging abnormalities in adolescence and adulthood. Some have interpreted these associations to suggest that obesity causes intellectual decline in the first half of the life course. We analyzed data from a prospective longitudinal study to test whether becoming obese was associated with intellectual decline from childhood to midlife.