Growing anxious – are preschoolers matched to their futures?

If we want to break the epidemic of mental health concerns in young people we have to focus on the beginning of life.

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The connection between what happens in early childhood and mental wellbeing later in life has come under the spotlight in recent years. In a new paper, published in the prestigious journal Science, scientists Sir Peter Gluckman and Professor Mark Hanson use an evolutionary biology framework to provide, for the first time, a compelling explanation for why children and young people are increasingly anxious.

The two authors have worked closely together for over 25 years on exploring the evolutionary and developmental biology as applied to health and disease. Their latest paper, Growing anxious – Are preschoolers matched to their futures?, explains that because of how humans have evolved developmentally, the conditions children experience in their earliest developmental stages can predispose them to heightened anxiety later in childhood and adolescence.

The authors say this predisposition, while helpful to cope with highly challenging environments in later life, may instead result in a “mismatch” when the young person’s actual environment does not require intense emotional regulatory responses.

They say maternal stress during and after pregnancy can affect how a baby’s brain develops, especially in areas that regulate emotions. This evolved biological response is a result of the child predicting a more stressful postnatal environment and aiming to cope with it in the future.

Another factor that shapes a young child’s brain development is the emotional environment they grow up in. Children who are not able to experience active interactions with adults within and outside the home may also be predisposed to predicting challenging future environments and tend to show altered neurodevelopment.

“These examples imply that many young people experiencing mental distress do not necessarily have a mental illness. Instead, evolutionary and developmental processes have simply primed them to respond excessively to the inevitable stresses of modern adolescent life,” says Sir Peter.

“There is a wider array of influences that can drive anxiety in childhood and adolescence than previously recognised. Today’s sociocultural environment and the digital world are evolutionarily novel in terms of their nature, scale and speed of change,” he says.

To address the challenge of rising anxiety in children and young people, the authors stress the need for preventive measures that go beyond symptoms and reduce the impact of early experiences on the developing brain.

“Limited availability of high-quality care for children in their early postnatal years may limit the types of adult-infant interactions that foster healthy neurodevelopment. And it’s possible that excessive use of digital devices while caregiving may affect a child’s brain and executive function development by reducing important face-to-face time with caregivers,” says Sir Peter.

“Solutions need a life course perspective, involving more cohesive thinking about parental and caregiver support and the early childhood years by policy makers across health, education, and social welfare,” says Professor Hanson.

“Much more focus is needed on the preschool years as well as better health and social care policies, if we are to prevent repeating cycles of these problems across generations. If we don’t change our thinking and actions about young people’s emotional development, the consequences may well be enormous,” says Sir Peter.