Do prospective and retrospective measures of childhood maltreatment identify the same individuals? This question has captivated psychiatrists and psychologists since the inception of our discipline¹ and still permeates many aspects of our professions. Researchers use retrospective reports as a shortcut to better understand the consequences of childhood maltreatment without the significant time or financial investment needed to undertake cohort studies.² Clinicians use retrospective reports to swiftly identify individuals who are at heightened risk of mental illness by virtue of their exposure to childhood maltreatment.³ Public health professionals use retrospective reports to pragmatically estimate the health burden associated with exposure to childhood maltreatment.⁴ All these practices rely on the assumption that retrospective reports and prospective measures identify the same, or at least similar, groups of individuals. However, qualitative reviews^5,6 have raised concerns about the validity of this assumption. Herein we present, to our knowledge, the first quantitative assessment of the agreement between retrospective reports and prospective measures of childhood maltreatment.

Background: Adverse childhood experiences ( ACE s; e.g. abuse, neglect, and parental loss) have been associated with increased risk for later‐life disease and dysfunction using adults’ retrospective self‐reports of ACE s. Research should test whether associations between ACE s and health outcomes are the same for prospective and retrospective ACE measures. Methods: We estimated agreement between ACE s prospectively recorded throughout childhood (by Study staff at Study member ages 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, and 15) and retrospectively recalled in adulthood (by Study members when they reached age 38), in the population‐representative Dunedin cohort ( N = 1,037). We related both retrospective and prospective ACE measures to physical, mental, cognitive, and social health at midlife measured through both objective (e.g. biomarkers and neuropsychological tests) and subjective (e.g. self‐reported) means. Results: Dunedin and U.S. Centers for Disease Control ACE distributions were similar. Retrospective and prospective measures of adversity showed moderate agreement ( r  =   .47, p  <   .001; weighted Kappa = .31, 95% CI : .27–.35). Both associated with all midlife outcomes. As compared to prospective ACE s, retrospective ACE s showed stronger associations with life outcomes that were subjectively assessed, and weaker associations with life outcomes that were objectively assessed. Recalled ACE s and poor subjective outcomes were correlated regardless of whether prospectively recorded ACE s were evident. Individuals who recalled more ACE s than had been prospectively recorded were more neurotic than average, and individuals who recalled fewer ACE s than recorded were more agreeable. Conclusions: Prospective ACE records confirm associations between childhood adversity and negative life outcomes found previously using retrospective ACE reports. However, more agreeable and neurotic dispositions may, respectively, bias retrospective ACE measures toward underestimating the impact of adversity on objectively measured life outcomes and overestimating the impact of adversity on self‐reported outcomes. Associations between personality factors and the propensity to recall adversity were extremely modest and warrant further investigation. Risk predictions based on retrospective ACE reports should utilize objective outcome measures. Where objective outcome measurements are difficult to obtain, correction factors may be warranted.

The practice of diagnosing mental disorders is at a crossroads. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which guides diagnostic practice, is being questioned.¹ The US National Institute of Mental Health has called for a new approach to studying mental disorders,² and the public is confused about what constitutes a mental disorder, resulting in a practice known as diagnosis shopping.³ Our thesis is that progress in conceptualizing mental disorders has been delayed by the field’s limiting focus on cross-sectional information. This study demonstrates how much novel information can be learned by taking a longitudinal, life-course view of mental disorders.

Lead is a ubiquitous pollutant. Policies that eliminated lead from paint and gasoline were thought to have eliminated lead from most communities in the developed world. But the water crisis in Flint, Michigan has triggered renewed concern about lead poisoning.¹ Inhabitants of many US cities are still exposed to high lead levels.²

Air pollution is a worldwide environmental health issue. Increasingly, reports suggest that poor air quality may be associated with mental health problems, but these studies often use global measures and rarely focus on early development when psychopathology commonly emerges. To address this, we combined high-resolution air pollution exposure estimates and prospectively-collected phenotypic data to explore concurrent and longitudinal associations between air pollutants of major concern in urban areas and mental health problems in childhood and adolescence. Exploratory analyses were conducted on 284 London-based children from the Environmental Risk (E-Risk) Longitudinal Twin Study. Exposure to annualized PM2.5 and NO2 concentrations was estimated at address-level when children were aged 12. Symptoms of anxiety, depression, conduct disorder, and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder were assessed at ages 12 and 18. Psychiatric diagnoses were ascertained from interviews with the participants at age 18. We found no associations between age-12 pollution exposure and concurrent mental health problems. However, age-12 pollution estimates were significantly associated with increased odds of major depressive disorder at age 18, even after controlling for common risk factors. This study demonstrates the potential utility of incorporating high-resolution pollution estimates into large epidemiological cohorts to robustly investigate associations between air pollution and youth mental health.

Cognitive reserve is a hypothetical construct that has been used to inform models of cognitive aging and is presumed to be indicative of life experiences that may mitigate the effects of brain pathology. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the construct validity of cognitive reserve by examining both its convergent and its discriminant validity across three different samples of participants using structural equation modeling. The cognitive reserve variables were found to correlate highly with one another (thereby providing evidence of convergent validity), but demanding tests of discriminant validity indicated that, in two of the samples, the cognitive reserve construct was highly related to an executive functioning construct. (JINS, 2009, 15, 558–569.)