Psychiatry Research EG

Background Early childhood frequent exposure to toxic stress such as abuse or neglect, parental substance abuse or parental mental illness, and violence can have a cumulative impact on the child’s mental health. Therefore, the study aimed to assess the association between frequent exposures to family-related adverse experiences and the development of behavioral and cognitive impairment in a random sample of Egyptian primary school children. Results Witnessing household member treated violently was the most prevalent adversity in 90.4% of the studied students, followed by emotional neglect in 88.6%. The highly exposed children were more likely to have below-average performance IQ, 2.5 times more than the exposed group (P = 0.03) [IQ score is considered average if it ranged 90–110 and below average if it ranged 70–89]. They were nearly 3 times at risk to develop behavioral problems (P = 0.003), 2.5 times more likely to develop attention deficit (P = 0.02), and nearly 5 times more likely to develop externalizing behavior (P < 0.001) than their peers. Conclusion Early exposure to adverse experiences increases the child’s vulnerability to attention deficit and externalizing behavior with negative impact on IQ scores especially performance IQ.