Publication date: 01 Apr 2022
What is already known about this subject:
- Anxiety disorder is one of the most common mental health problems in young adults. Young adults suffering from anxiety disorder experience excessive and uncontrollable fear and worry, panic symptoms and restlessness or feeling tense, avoiding perceived threats and obsessive thinking. Several studies have reported that anxiety disorder is a major predictor of lack of interest in learning and poor academic performance in exams, increased risk of substance use problems and suicidal ideation and attempt. Rigorously identifying early-life presumptive risk factors of this disorder is therefore critically important to direct preventive and intervention strategies to alleviate such consequences later in life.
- Several studies have assessed the risk of anxiety symptoms in younger children born to mothers who reported tobacco and alcohol use during pregnancy. However, there is a paucity of prospective longitudinal studies assessing the associations between maternal tobacco and alcohol use during pregnancy and the risk of experiencing symptoms of anxiety in young adults.
- To our knowledge, this is the first longitudinal study to investigate the associations between maternal tobacco and alcohol use during pregnancy and the risk of experiencing symptoms of anxiety in young adults. Therefore, the aim of this study was to estimate the associations between maternal tobacco and alcohol use during pregnancy (Gen1) and the risk of experiencing symptoms of anxiety in young adults (Gen2).
What this study adds
- Participants were from the Raine Study. At 18 and 34 weeks of pregnancy, mothers (Gen1) reported the number of cigarettes they had smoked per day and an average of the total number of standard drinks of alcohol consumed per week during the first and third trimesters of pregnancy, respectively. We used these data to categorize pregnant mothers as either non-smokers/non-drinkers/ or smokers/drinkers. Experiencing symptoms of anxiety in young adults at the age of 20 years (Gen2) was assessed by a short form of the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale (DASS 21). Associations between maternal tobacco and alcohol use during pregnancy and the risk of experiencing symptoms of anxiety in young adults were examined by generalized linear models (GLM) fitted using log binomial regression to estimate relative risks (RRs). We added different risk factors sequentially as adjustment variables in separate models to explore the role of potential confounders and mediators.
- The findings of this study suggest that young adults born to mothers who reported tobacco smoking during the first and third trimesters of pregnancy were at increased risk of experiencing symptoms of anxiety at the age of 20 years. Therefore, early screening and prevention of such risk factor may reduce the risk of anxiety symptoms in young adults.