{"doi":"10.1002/ajpa.24791","title":"Childhood adversity during the post‐apartheid transition and <scp>COVID</scp>‐19 stress independently predict adult <scp>PTSD</scp> risk in urban <scp>S</scp>outh <scp>A</scp>frica: A biocultural analysis of the stress sensitization hypothesis","abstract":"OBJECTIVES: The COVID-19 pandemic in South Africa introduced new societal adversities and mental health threats in a country where one in three individuals are expected to develop a psychiatric condition sometime in their life. Scientists have suggested that psychosocial stress and trauma during childhood may increase one's vulnerability to the mental health consequences of future stressors-a process known as stress sensitization. This prospective analysis assessed whether childhood adversity experienced among South African children across the first 18 years of life, coinciding with the post-apartheid transition, exacerbates the mental health impacts of psychosocial stress experienced during the 2019 coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic (ca. 2020-2021). MATERIALS AND METHODS: Data came from 88 adults who participated in a follow-up study of a longitudinal birth cohort study in Soweto, South Africa. Childhood adversity and COVID-19 psychosocial stress were assessed as primary predictors of adult PTSD risk, and an interaction term between childhood adversity and COVID-19 stress was calculated to evaluate the potential effect of stress sensitization. RESULTS: Fifty-six percent of adults exhibited moderate-to-severe PTSD symptoms. Greater childhood adversity and higher COVID-19 psychosocial stress independently predicted worse post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms in adults. Adults who reported greater childhood adversity exhibited non-significantly worse PTSD symptoms from COVID-19 psychosocial stress. DISCUSSION: These results highlight the deleterious mental health effects of both childhood trauma and COVID-19 psychosocial stress in our sample and emphasize the need for greater and more accessible mental health support as the pandemic progresses in South Africa.","journal":"American Journal of Biological Anthropology","year":2023,"id":369227,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":10,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9571,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2023-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":1127940,"name":"Rihlat Saïd-Mohamed","orcid":"0000-0003-1592-5412","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":298901,"name":"Shane A. Norris","orcid":"0000-0001-7124-3788","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1124317,"name":"Sara Naicker","orcid":"0000-0003-2000-9742","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":515114,"name":"Linda Richter","orcid":"0000-0002-3654-3192","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":533598,"name":"Christopher W. Kuzawa","orcid":"0000-0002-0649-8677","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":664466,"name":"Andrew Wooyoung Kim","orcid":"0000-0002-0148-7565","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":77,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T01:15:28.704894Z","pmid":"37283092","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}