Our overarching goal is to identify and intensively study long-term patterns of continuity and change in adaptive functioning and severe psychopathology in a sample of 141 early midlife adults (ages 38-43), followed intensively for the past 24 years. These adults are drawn from two original adolescent cohorts whom we first assessed at age 14: psychiatrically hospitalized (non-psychotic) and demographically matched non-patient students. We have successfully obtained detailed data regarding the psychosocial development and functioning of this sample into their young adult years. The original samples are remarkably intact: 98 percent of those still living again assessed at age 25; and in the late young adult phase, 94 percent have already been assessed. In the proposed new phase of our project, we address the frequently neglected early midlife years (ages 38-43), examining long-term predictors of continuity and discontinuity of psychosocial adaptation. We plan to measure- through a multi-method, multi-reporter approach-life course antecedents of psychopathology and successful adaptation to three major challenges of midlife: sustaining satisfying relationships with partners and peers; providing competent parenting; and, maintaining a positive career trajectory. These midlife challenges will be pursued through four specific aims: 1. Antecedents of psychopathology and global functioning through midlife; 2. predictors of the quality of midlife social relationships; 3. Parenting in midlife; 4. Work in midlife-developing career trajectories. The proposed study is a new step in this longitudinal project, focusing on continuity from adolescence through adulthood from the vantage point of adaptation in midlife-relevant social contexts. We have a unique opportunity to now investigate long-term life course development, in highly intact, high-risk and low-risk samples. Such an extraordinary chance to look, through developmental and psychiatric lenses, at life course trajectories from adolescence to midlife is facilitated by the demanding, time-intensive tracking and assessment of this sample at critical points in development over the past two decades. Our analyses of predictors of life course development in psychopathology and functioning will proceed from the simple to the complex, and will include traditional repeated measures models followed by latent growth curve modeling.
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