Pregnancy study finds climate disaster affects those not yet born

Nine days after the storm, the consequences of Hurricane Ian—the deadliest tropical cyclone to strike the United States since Katrina in 2005—are just beginning to emerge. But researchers in the U.S. point to a different storm as they reveal what may be unexpected long-term consequences even for those who are not yet born.

Scientists at College of New York (CUNY) Queens, alongside colleagues from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, have spent a decade monitoring the health impacts on pregnant people who lived through Superstorm Sandy, a catastrophic storm that hit the New York region in October 2012. As part of their Stress in Pregnancy Study, they evaluated the stress impacts on the children of those who were pregnant at the time.

Their work, published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, was released just one week before disaster struck again on the Gulf Coast of Florida as well as Cuba.

“We’ve known for some time that maternal stress during pregnancy plays a key role in the mental health development of the child,” said psychology professor Yoko Nomura, lead author of the study. “Understanding these connections and distinctions grows more necessary every day with the increased frequency of natural disasters driven by climate change.”

The study results are based on findings from 163 children from diverse racial and economic backgrounds. They were divided into two groups, 40.5% of whom were born to people who lived through Superstorm Sandy while pregnant and 59.5% of whom were not.

On average, the children were three years old when their families had their first interviews with the study team. They then continued to meet with the CUNY researchers for annual evaluations.

What the psychologists discovered is that the risks for depression, anxiety, and attention deficit and disruptive behavior disorders was “substantially higher” in those whose parents lived through Superstorm Sandy and experienced the stress of the disaster.

Male children experienced a higher risk of attention deficit and hyperactivity disorders (ADHD), as well as behavioral problems like disruptive or oppositional defiant disorder. Female children had an elevated risk for anxiety disorders, depression, and phobia. These included separation anxiety disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, and dysthymia, a type of long-term depression.

The precise reasons for why prenatal exposure to natural disaster may have early mental health development impacts aren’t clear, but it’s likely related to the interaction of genetic and environmental factors.

“Our ongoing study elucidates the impact of environmental stress on the psychiatric development of preschool children and the elevated risks for early psychopathology in this population,” said co-author Dr. Jeffrey Newcorn, director of the Division of ADHD and Learning Disorders at Icahn. “Most strikingly, the type of mental health problems very much depended on the biological sex of the child.”

The findings are significant enough to warrant a call for increased support of pregnant people who face climate-related natural disasters like Superstorm Sandy or Hurricane Ian, as well as extreme heat, wildfire, and other climate impacts.