Intergenerational Study of War-Affected Youth

NCT ID: NCT06440460

Last Updated: 2025-08-07

Basic Information

• Recruitment Status: ACTIVE_NOT_RECRUITING
• Total Enrollment: 804 participants
• Study Classification: OBSERVATIONAL
• Study Start Date: 2024-05-27
• Study Completion Date: 2026-11-30

Brief Summary

War-related violence is a leading driver of mental disorders and illness affecting children in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Parents exposed early in life to war-related violence and loss are at risk for mental health problems and may pass risks to their offspring. The study posits that war-related trauma alters the stress-response circuitry in ways that endure into adulthood and affect the next generation. This will be the first investigation in a 20-year longitudinal study to examine mechanisms that link parental war-related trauma exposure and subsequent mental health problems to risk for mental disorders in offspring. This study will extend the first intergenerational study of war in Sub-Saharan Africa (R01HD073349) to focus on children (aged 7-24) born to war-affected parents. Assessments of behavioral and biological indicators of the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC)-linked constructs of self-regulation and stress reactivity will be collected, including autonomic nervous system reactivity, inflammation, and telomere length as well as sophisticated observations of parent-child interactions and synchrony. These measures will be utilized to identify potentially modifiable risk and protective processes both to inform the development of screening tools to identify families at risk for poor child mental health and to be deployed as active ingredients of interventions to reduce transmission of mental health problems to children of war-affected parents.

This follow-up study involves the following activities:

1. Pilot to assess measure performance and field test study protocols.

1. Translation and adaptation of newly selected measures

2. Pilot study of new child and adult measures with 36 caregivers and 60 children in a district of Sierra Leone unlinked to participants to test the feasibility and validity of new tools.

2. Fifth wave of data collection from war-affected youth who are now parents and their children aged 7-24.

1. Household tracking and re-enrollment of 145 households that were formerly enrolled in the Longitudinal Study of War-Affected Youth (LSWAY; T1: 2002, T2: 2004, T3: 2008, T4: 2016).

2. Quantitative (full sample) and qualitative (subsample) data collection with 145 households who were enrolled in T4 LSWAY, including war-affected youth who are now parents, their intimate partners, and their children aged 7-24.

Through these activities, the investigators will test three overarching hypotheses:

1. Childhood war-related trauma exposure will be associated with mental difficulties (anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress, disruptions of emotion regulation).

2. Poor mental health in war-affected parents will be associated with emotional and behavioral disruptions in biological offspring.

3. Risk and protective factors across the social ecology may serve as intervention targets to mitigate the effects of parental war-related trauma on behavioral disruptions and stress physiology, both within and across generations.

Detailed Description

The Intergenerational Study of War-Affected Youth (ISWAY) entails a fifth wave of data collection in a 22-year study of war-affected youth in Sierra Leone (LSWAY), the first of its kind in Sub-Saharan Africa. LSWAY findings drawn from four waves of data collection (T1:2002, T2: 2004, T3: 2008, T4:2016/17) indicate that a healthy transition to adulthood among war-affected youth was linked to engagement in prosocial behavior and community involvement, while problems with hostility, poor emotion regulation, and social withdrawal created barriers to achieving healthy and productive lives. Community stigma and poor family acceptance compounded these barriers. Preliminary analyses of offspring of war-affected youth-first enrolled at T4-indicated that harsh paternal parenting was associated with offspring poor mental health and maternal parenting (harsh and warm) predicted offspring disruptions in emotion regulation and mental health. The investigators theorize such associations are linked to biological mechanisms, but research to date has been limited to cross-sectional data on the health and mental health of biological offspring.

ISWAY will examine how social and biobehavioral mechanisms operate among war-affected parents to shape parenting and the mental health of offspring. The study's guiding framework blends a biobehavioral and ecological model of risk and resilience with the Stress Adjustment Paradigm.The Multisystemic Model of Child Development holds that both behavioral and biological mechanisms are influenced by risk and protective factors at different levels of the social ecology and that exposure to trauma may lead to disruptions in individual stress reactivity and emotion regulation. The Stress-Adjustment Paradigm posits that traumatic life events lead to individual outcomes that are shaped by risk and protective processes across the social ecology. Taken together, these theories propose that both past trauma and current social stressors (e.g., underemployment, stigma) have implications for understanding the mechanisms linking past parental trauma to parent-child interactions and the mental health of subsequent generations. Adult stress reactivity, including ANS reactivity, may manifest in similar ways among offspring. Biological markers of inflammation and telomere length may also be linked in war-affected parents and their offspring. An integrated model suggests that several important protective processes and resources may operate to mitigate these intergenerational disruptions such as social support and access to other attachment figures in the household who have strong self-regulation. Helping parents who have experienced severe trauma build self-regulation skills and extending social support networks may be critical components of preventive interventions.

ISWAY entails an enriched follow-up of the parents and their offspring focusing on the RDoC-related constructs that may underlie self-regulation (negative/positive valence systems, arousal systems, social processes). Collecting and analyzing both behavioral and biological/physiological data will deepen understanding of mechanisms that may contribute to increased risk of mental health difficulties in offspring. This will be amplified by an exploration of modifiable risk and protective factors across the social ecology (individual, family, and community levels) to prioritize as intervention targets for addressing intergenerational risks to the mental health of offspring of war-affected parents.

Conditions

Anxiety Disorders; Anxiety State; Depressive Disorder; Mood Disorders; Trauma and Stressor Related Disorders; Social Skills; Violence, Non-accidental

Study Design

• Observational Model Type: COHORT
• Study Time Perspective: PROSPECTIVE

Eligibility Criteria

Inclusion Criteria

• being a war-affected young adult (referred to as the index participant) previously interviewed at one or more waves of the Longitudinal Study of War Affected Youth (LSWAY) who still resides in Sierra Leone

Exclusion Criteria

• being a cohabitating biological child (aged 7-24) of the index participant

• not being sampled in a prior LSWAY wave
• not being a biological child or intimate partner of the index cohort participant
• being in acute crisis (active suicidality or psychosis)

• Minimum Eligible Age: 7 Years
• Eligible Sex: ALL
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: No

Sponsors

University of Makeni

UNKNOWN

Sponsor Role: collaborator

Caritas Freetown

OTHER

Sponsor Role: collaborator

Tulane University

OTHER

Sponsor Role: collaborator

Kenema Government Hospital

OTHER

Sponsor Role: collaborator

Boston College

OTHER

Sponsor Role: lead

Responsible Party

Theresa Betancourt

Salem Professor in Global Practice

Responsibility Role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR

Principal Investigators

Theresa S Betancourt

Role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR

Boston College

Locations

Caritas Freetown

Freetown, , Sierra Leone

Countries

Sierra Leone

Other Identifiers

22.115.01

Identifier Type: -

Identifier Source: org_study_id