Thing is, this study also had some ~serious~ problems For one thing, the sample size seems big, but the number of kids who developed mental health issues was just 40 out of 3600!pic.twitter.com/J6ixcqTm9S
Epidemiologist. Writer (Guardian, Observer etc). "Well known research trouble-maker". PhDing at @UoW Host of @senscipod Email gidmk.healthnerd@gmail.com he/him
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Thing is, this study also had some ~serious~ problems For one thing, the sample size seems big, but the number of kids who developed mental health issues was just 40 out of 3600!pic.twitter.com/J6ixcqTm9S
They also really didn't control for many things - while this may have been due to sample size, it seriously limited the conclusions
They didn't, for example, control for maternal alcohol or drug intake, which can both have a HUGE impact on childrens' mental health
The absolute risk increase was also pretty miniscule Kids exposed to no stress had a 0.5% risk of developing personality disorders Kids exposed to some stress had a 1.6% risk Triple the odds, but only 1.1% risk increase!pic.twitter.com/qTpdRcW2oP
Also, the study assessed stress using one questionnaire given partway through the pregnancy in 1975, which I'd argue is...problematic
On top of all of this, the study used a statistical technique called logistic regression Without going into the details, this is very questionable for a study like this
Basically, if you have too few outcomes (i.e. only 40) in your sample, and include a bunch of covariates in the statistical model, you end up with a bit of a meaningless result I mean, just look at those confidence intervals!pic.twitter.com/kIKGKcoSov
(As a side note, there appear to be a few numerical errors in the paper, such as this one in the table above)pic.twitter.com/XB7m1aiQ20
If you read that table, kids exposed to "any" stress have 3.37x the odds of having any diagnosis of personality disorders, but the confidence interval goes from 1.61x to 7.07x That's ~huge~
TL:DR: - association between stress in pregnancy and kids getting personality disorders - very weak - risk increase is tiny - statistical analysis is problematic - HUGE potential for residual confounding - ALMOST CERTAINLY NOT SOMETHING FOR MUMS TO WORRY ABOUT
Now, while the media certainly had a role to play in the misinterpretation of this study, I think the problem started in the conclusions This is not well worded at allpic.twitter.com/cIm8jvpLvi
The authors have been quoted elsewhere saying that this definitely isn't causal, but if you read the conclusions of the study it sounds like it absolutely is That's a huge problem
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