Early socioemotional development: Investigating protective factors that support resilience in a South African birth cohort study

De Leeuw, Joannes

Early socioemotional development: Investigating protective factors that support resilience in a South African birth cohort study

Thesis / Dissertation

2025

Publisher

University of Cape Town

Department

Department of Psychology

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Abstract

Globally, the prevalence of mental health challenges amongst children is increasing, raising significant concerns. Despite this, there remains a limited understanding of the protective factors that support resilience in children from low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). In high-risk contexts, resilience can serve as a critical buffer against adverse effects on mental health. However, the intricate interplay between risk and protective factors in young children has been insufficiently explored, despite the foundational role of early childhood experiences in shaping an individual's positive developmental trajectory. In my thesis, I conducted a scoping review to summarise the current evidence on resilience in children aged 10 years and younger, synthesizing how resilience is conceptualised and operationalised in LMICs. I also presented a novel perspective on childhood adversity by examining both children's exposure to community violence and their emotional response. Finally, I investigated the relationship between resilience, adversity, and mental health outcomes over time in children aged 8 years and younger in the South African Drakenstein Child Health Study. The scoping review revealed that only 26 studies from 14 countries investigated childhood resilience in LMICs, highlighting a significant paucity of data, particularly in longitudinal research. In my own study of adversity, I provided a novel bifactor model, with a general adversity factor (combining violence exposure and emotional responses) and four subscales, capturing nuanced emotional responses beyond frequency and severity of adverse exposures. Importantly, higher resilience scores were consistently linked to lower mental health difficulties over time, with significant interaction effects between adversity and resilience. Moderating effects were observed at individual levels (e.g., emotion regulation, temperament), relational levels (e.g., caregiver resilience, maternal employment), and contextual levels (e.g., household income), underscoring the multifaceted nature of resilience in high-risk settings. This thesis underscores the dynamic nature of resilience in the face of ongoing adversity during childhood in high-risk contexts. By identifying several protective factors at different timepoints, it makes a significant contribution to this underexplored area and emphasises the importance of designing resilience-focused interventions to mitigate mental health difficulties in young children from LMICs.