Association between childhood neglect and the autonomic nerves disorder in students of sixth graders / 中国学校卫生

ABSTRACT

Objective@#To explore prevalence of childhood neglect and autonomic nervous function, and its association in sixth graders students in Harbin, and to provide clues to improve physical and mental health of children and adolescents.@*Methods@#Cluster sampling method was used to select 1 259 students from grade 6 in 5 schools in two districts of Harbin, and Childhood Trauma Questionnaire-Short Form (CTQ-SF) and TOHO University Medical Index (TMI) were filled in.@*Results@#The total rate of childhood neglect was 45.7%, of which the rate of emotional neglect and physical neglect were 18.8%, 40.8%. The rate of autonomic nerves disorder was 47.2%. The rate of autonomic nerves disorder in students suffered from neglect, emotional neglect, physical neglect are higher than those without any of neglect(χ2=50.52, 32.02, 43.61, P<0.01), and with the increase of the degree of neglect, the rate of autonomic nervous disorder were gradually increasing(χ2=47.99, 47.07, 49.24, P<0.01). After controlled for gender, neglect, emotional neglect, physical neglect were positively associated with autonomic nerves disorder(OR=1.53-2.34, P<0.05), and the odd ratio for autonomic nerves disorder among those with mild-to-moderate,moderate-to-severe and extremely servere neglect was 1.37, 1.83, 5.10 compared to those with none or mild neglect.@*Conclusion@#Childhood neglect is closely related to adolescent the autonomic nerves disorder in sixth graders students in Harbin. Moreover, the more serious the childhood neglect is, the higher the detection rate of autonomic nerves disorder is. In order to improve the physical and mental health of children and adolescents, it is necessary to pay attention to childhood neglect and early assessment of their autonomic function.