Jackob M. Najman

• PhD
• Managing Director at The University of Queensland

Objectives Depression and anxiety often emerge in adolescence and persist into early adulthood. Developing a greater understanding of the factors that influence their persistence may inform psychological interventions. Their association with an insecure attachment style is well established although the mediating role of attachment anxiety in the pe...

Background Satisfying close relationships are associated with higher levels of life satisfaction throughout the life course. Despite the fundamental role of attachment style in close relationships, few studies have longitudinally examined the association between attachment style in young adults with later life satisfaction. Method Data from 2,088 p...

The major anxiety disorders (ANX; including generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, and phobias) are highly prevalent, often onset early, persist throughout life, and cause substantial global disability. Although distinct in their clinical presentations, they likely represent differential expressions of a dysregulated threat-response system....

Background Preterm and/or low birthweight (PT/LBW) is predictive of a range of adverse adult outcomes, including lower employment, educational attainment, and mental wellbeing, and higher welfare receipt. Existing studies, however, on PT/LBW and adult psychosocial risks are often limited by low statistical power. Studies also fail to examine potent...

Child maltreatment (CM) is associated with negative health outcomes in adulthood, including deliberate self-harm (DSH), suicidal behaviours, and victimisation. It is unknown if associations extend to emergency department (ED) presentations for non-DSH related injuries. Birth cohort study data was linked to administrative health data, including ED p...

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a heritable neurodevelopmental disorder for which genetic factors explain up to 75% of the variance. In this study, we performed a genome-wide association meta-analysis (GWAMA) of ADHD symptom measures, with an effective sample size of 120,092 (71,733 unique individuals from 28 population-based coh...

Background and aims Evidence on the associations between child maltreatment (CM), alcohol use disorders (AUDs) and other substance use disorders (SUDs) comes largely from retrospective studies. These rely on self-reported data, which may be impacted by recall bias. Using prospective CM reports to statutory agencies, we measured associations between...

Aims To compare prospective reports of child maltreatment (CM) with emergency department (ED) presentations for deliberate self-harm (DSH) and suicidal ideation in individuals aged between 25 and 39 years old. Methods Linked records between the Mater-University of Queensland Study of Pregnancy birth cohort and Queensland administrative health data...

Objectives Recent studies have demonstrated that parental imprisonment (PI) is associated with cardiometabolic risk later in life. However, underlying risk factors for these associations have not previously been explored. The present study examines how early childhood behaviors and parental imprisonment may be associated with cardiometabolic risk i...

Background The Attachment Style Questionnaire (ASQ) is used to assess an individual’s inner working model of interpersonal relationships and attachment style. The study evaluated the factor structure, sex invariance, and convergent validity of the ASQ among middle-aged women and their young adult offspring. Methods Middle aged mothers (n = 3,605, M...

Background: Child maltreatment is a major public health issue worldwide. Retrospective studies show a strong association between self-reported child maltreatment and poor mental and physical health problems. Prospective studies that use reports to statutory agencies are less common, and comparisons of self- and agency-reported abuse in the same co...

Purpose While excessive weight gain is highest during young adulthood, the extent to which specific dietary patterns are associated with changes in measures of body mass in this course of life remains unknown. We aimed to examine the associations of dietary patterns at 21 years with changes in body weight and body mass index (BMI) between 21 and 30...

Background and aims: To examine a combined effect of dietary intakes, blood lipid and insulin resistance in young adulthood on the risk of predicted CVD through midlife. Methods and results: Data of young adults from a birth cohort study in Australia were used. Reduced rank regression (RRR) and partial least squares (PLS) methods identified diet...

Background: Use of tobacco and cannabis is common and has been reported to predict lung function. Less is known about co-use of tobacco and cannabis and their impact on changes in lung function to early adulthood. Research question: The study examines whether cigarette smoking or cannabis use and co-use are each associated with lung function in...

(Aust N Z J Obstet Gynaecol. 2022;62:226–233. doi: 10.1111/ajo.13403) There is increased recent literature suggesting an association of birth by cesarean delivery (CD) with neurodevelopmental disorders in offspring. Considering the world-wide utilization of CD, it is critical to understand any long-term adverse outcomes. Previous findings related t...

This study examined the longitudinal association between adolescent body weight misclassifications and body fat and waist circumference during adulthood. A sample was derived from a large Australian birth cohort study. The data analyses were restricted to 1002 participants for whom data on both measured and perceived weight at a 14-year follow-up a...

The current study examined associations between preconception diagnoses of major depressive disorder (MDD) and anxiety disorders in adolescence and young adulthood and perinatal depression and anxiety symptoms in early fatherhood. In an Australian community cohort study of health and development, earlier history of MDD and anxiety disorders (extend...

This was a record-linkage analysis of a birth cohort to examine the association between self-reported self-harm in adulthood and childhood maltreatment (CM) as prospectively notified to authorities and self-reported on the Child Trauma Questionnaire. There were 2507 participants at 30-year follow-up with data on both CM and self-reported self-harm...

A range of adult health outcomes have been linked to early childhood adversities. These early adversities include parental marital breakdown and family economic disadvantage. Childhood experiences of maltreatment have also been linked to a variety of adult health outcomes. As both childhood adversities and child maltreatment often co-occur, we exam...

Substantial genetic correlations have been reported across psychiatric disorders and numerous cross-disorder genetic variants have been detected. To identify the genetic variants underlying general psychopathology in childhood, we performed a genome-wide association study using a total psychiatric problem score. We analyzed 6,844,199 common SNPs in...

A large number of early life exposures predict child maltreatment. Using data from a 30-year birth cohort study we examine 12 early life course risk factors of four types of self-reported childhood maltreatment recalled at the 30-year follow-up. Of the 7223 children in the sample at birth, 2425 responded to the Child Trauma Questionnaire at the 30-...

Public Health: Local and Global Perspectives presents a comprehensive introduction to public health issues and concepts in the Australian and international contexts. It provides students with fundamental knowledge of the public health field, including frameworks, theories, key organisations and contemporary issues. The third edition features a new...

Objectives Background and aims: The extent to which dietary patterns influence the risk of abnormal blood lipids throughout young adulthood remains unclear. the aim of this is study is to investigate whether early young adulthood dietary patterns predict the risk of abnormal blood lipids during later young adulthood. Methods We used data from a lo...

Background: Supply of alcohol to adolescents is associated with increased alcohol consumption and harms including alcohol use disorder (AUD). We aimed to identify: (1) trajectories of alcohol supply to adolescents; (2) sociodemographic characteristics associated with supply trajectory; (3) patterns of alcohol consumption by supply trajectory; and...

Aims Whether early young adulthood dietary patterns predict the risk of metabolic syndrome (MetS) and diabetes-related endpoints prior to middle age remains unknown. We examined the prospective associations of dietary patterns in early young adulthood with MetS and diabetes-related endpoints at later young adulthood. Methods We used data of young...

Background: Childhood maltreatment (CM) is associated with both dietary fat intake and obesity in later life. There is less information on associations with metabolic risk factors and specific types of CM such as physical, sexual and emotional abuse, as well as neglect. Aims: To assess the association between five types of self-reported CM and a...

Background The long-term mental and physical health consequences of childhood maltreatment have been well documented. Less known are the longer-term consequences of childhood maltreatment, specifically the extent to which childhood maltreatment predicts adult life success. Objectives To prospectively assess the extent to which childhood experience...

Objective To investigate the genetic architecture of internalizing symptoms in childhood and adolescence. Method In 22 cohorts, multiple univariate genome-wide association studies (GWASs) were performed using repeated assessments of internalizing symptoms, in a total of 64,561 children aged between 3 and 18. Results were aggregated in meta-analyse...

Objectives Parental imprisonment is linked with child health in later life. The present study provides the first prospective cohort analysis and non-U.S. based study examining parental imprisonment and cardiometabolic risk factors in adolescence and adulthood. Methods The study followed 7,223 children born from live, singleton births from 1981-198...

Objective Most studies of the association between psychiatric disorders and poor oral health have been conducted in clinical settings. Where available, data from community surveys have generally been cross-sectional or considered anxiety and depression as a consequence of poor oral health, not the other way round. This study therefore used a birth...

Background While some studies have reported that early age of onset of cannabis and amphetamine use predicts a range of adverse outcomes, these findings are rarely adjusted for other predictors of adverse outcomes or subsequent drug use over the adult life course. These studies have not addressed the possibility that it is subsequent rather than ea...

Background Health anxiety is a subtype of the older term of hypochondriasis, in which there is worry rather than conviction of having an illness. Information on the association between childhood maltreatment and health anxiety in adulthood often comes from retrospective questionnaires that may be subject to recall bias. There are no prospective dat...

Background and aims The extent to which dietary patterns influence the risk of abnormal blood lipids throughout young adulthood remains unclear. Objective To investigate whether early young adulthood dietary patterns predict the risk of abnormal blood lipids during later young adulthood. Methods and Results We used data from a long running birth...

There is a strong association between self-reported child abuse and subsequent psychosis in retrospective data. Prospective studies of reports to statutory agencies are less common with limited information on people in their 30s. There have also been no comparisons of the influence of self- and agency-reported abuse on psychosis in adulthood. We th...

Background Pre-pregnancy obesity is a well-recognized risk factor for gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM). There is a continuity of obesity from childhood to adolescence and then adulthood. However, it is unknown whether early childhood obesity predicts GDM. Methods We investigated the prospective association of childhood triceps skinfold thicknes...

Background Co-administering cannabis with tobacco (i.e. co-administration of the substances mixed together) is a common practice among cannabis users, but the consequences of this practice are not well understood. This study examines the relationship between co-administering cannabis with tobacco and the long-term frequency of cannabis use in a you...

Objective: Information on the oral health outcomes of childhood maltreatment in adulthood is limited and reliant on retrospective questionnaires that are subject to recall bias. There are no data from prospective studies using maltreatment reports to statutory agencies. We therefore assessed the effect on dental outcomes and oral health care at 30...

Objective Previous studies of sociodemographic and lifestyle correlates of dietary patterns among young adults have primarily focused on physical activity and smoking, with inconclusive results. This study aims to examine the associations between a broader range of lifestyles of young adults and their patterns of food consumption. Design Cross-sec...

We test whether genetic influences that explain individual differences in aggression in early life also explain individual differences across the life-course. In two cohorts from The Netherlands ( N = 13,471) and Australia ( N = 5628), polygenic scores (PGSs) were computed based on a genome-wide meta-analysis of childhood/adolescence aggression. In...

Background Adolescents often display heterogenous trajectories of alcohol use. Initiation and escalation of drinking may be an important predictor of later harms. Previous attempts to conceptualise these trajectories lacked adjustment for known confounders of adolescent drinking, which our study has aimed to address by modelling dynamic changes in...

Background: Parents are the main supplier of alcohol to children but it is not known whether mothers and fathers equally contribute to the supply of alcohol to their female and male children as these children transition to adulthood. Objectives: i) to determine whether the gender of the parent is associated with the gender of the adolescent offspri...

Childhood aggressive behavior (AGG) has a substantial heritability of around 50%. Here we present a genome-wide association meta-analysis (GWAMA) of childhood AGG, in which all phenotype measures across childhood ages from multiple assessors were included. We analyzed phenotype assessments for a total of 328 935 observations from 87 485 children ag...

Background There is concern that rates of mental disorders may be increasing although findings disagree. Using an innovative design with a daughter-mother data set we assess whether there has been a generational increase in lifetime ever rates of major depressive disorder, generalised anxiety disorder, panic disorder, and post-traumatic stress diso...

Tobacco smoking remains highly prevalent in high-risk groups, including young adults who use cannabis and a variety of other drugs. We examine whether co-administering cannabis with tobacco is associated with heavier and more persistent tobacco smoking compared to separate use of these substances among young adults who use drugs recreationally. Dat...

Background: Caesarean section (CS) is associated with an increased risk of adverse health outcomes for both mothers and offspring. The evidence for an association between CS and reduced offspring cognitive and academic performance has been inconsistent, with considerable limitations. Aim: The aim of this study is to compare cognitive and academi...

This closing commentary to the special section presents an overview of the Queensland Alcohol-related violence and Night-Time Economy Monitoring evaluation findings in comparison to those from other jurisdictions where similar interventions have been implemented (such as Sydney and Newcastle), and especially with previous studies that have used sim...

This commentary introduces the special section on the outcomes of the Queensland Alcohol-related violence and Night-time Economy Monitoring project and outlines the political and policy context of the interventions put in place under the Queensland government's Tackling Alcohol-Fuelled Violence strategy. The development of the strategy was informed...

Objectives: To examine the association between child maltreatment (abuse and neglect) in one sibling and that in another as well as associated risk factors. Methods: The participants were 520 sibling pairs enrolled in a population-based birth cohort study in Brisbane, Australia (N = 1040). Exposure to suspected child maltreatment was measured by...

Purpose Studies have reported children born by caesarean section are more likely to have lower cognitive outcomes compared to those born by vaginal delivery. This paper reviews the literature examining caesarean birth and offspring cognitive outcomes. Methods A systematic search for observational studies or case–control studies that compared cogni...

Background Retrospective studies show a strong association between child abuse and subsequent psychiatric morbidity. Prospective studies are less common with conflicting data in young adults. We assessed the effect on psychological outcomes at 30-year follow-up of prospective agency notifications compared to retrospective self-reports of childhood...

Introduction Retrospective studies show a strong association between self-reported child abuse and subsequent tobacco use. Prospective studies using reports to statutory agencies are less common with limited information on people in their 30s. In addition, there have been no comparisons of the effect of self- and agency-reported abuse on smoking. W...

Background There is little known about how two sources of child maltreatment reports correspond, specifically for emotional, physical, sexual abuse and emotional or physical neglect. Objective To compare agency and self-reports of child maltreatment and determine whether they are predicted by similar early life course adverse experiences. Particip...

Introduction and Aims Retrospective studies have shown a strong association between experiencing maltreatment in childhood and subsequent illicit substance or alcohol use. Prospective studies are rarer, with limited data following subjects into adulthood. We report findings from a prospective record‐linkage analysis, which examines whether notified...

Introduction and aims: There is a lack of evidence regarding mental health disorder prevalence in people who use amphetamine-type stimulants (ATS). This study compares prevalence in Australian young adults who used ATS and young adults who had never used, and examines potential predictors. Design and methods: Population-based sampling was used t...

Objectives: Adolescents often display heterogenous trajectories of alcohol use. Initiation and escalation of drinking may be important predictors of later harms, including alcohol use disorder (AUD). Previous conceptualizations of these trajectories lacked adjustment for known confounders of adolescent drinking, which we aimed to address by modeli...

Potential long-lasting adverse effects of child maltreatment have been widely reported, although little is known about the distinctive long-term impact of differing types of maltreatment. Our objective for this special article is to integrate findings from the Mater-University of Queensland Study of Pregnancy, a longitudinal prenatal cohort study s...

Internalising symptoms in childhood and adolescence are as heritable as adult depression and anxiety, yet little is known of their molecular basis. This genome-wide association meta-analysis of internalising symptoms included repeated observations from 64,641 individuals, aged between 3 and 18. The N-weighted meta-analysis of overall internalising...

Aims: Understanding contexts in which social harms from drinking occur can help develop context-based harm reduction efforts. However, there is little knowledge of specific drinking contexts where such harms occur and whether these are gender or age specific. We aimed to investigate associations of a range of drinking contexts and social harms fro...

Background Parents frequently supply alcohol to their children, often only sips. We investigated whether supply of sips and whole drinks, from parents and other sources, are differentially associated with subsequent drinking outcomes. Methods A cohort of 1,910 adolescents (mean age 12.9yrs) were surveyed annually over seven years from 2010-11. We...

Background To quantify the extent to which methamphetamine use is associated with increases in crime net of any premorbid risk of criminality among people who use the drug. Methods Four one-month data panels from 469 participants dependent on methamphetamine were drawn from the MATES cohort (N = 501). Odds ratios for within-person effects were ext...

Objectives There is little known about whether exposure to family poverty at specific periods of the early life course independently contributes to coronary heart disease risk beyond the contribution of concurrent poverty. Methods Children were recruited in early pregnancy and additional survey data obtained during the pregnancy and at the 5-, 14-...

Background Despite the growing interest in investigating social harms from drinking, little is known about drinkers’ reports of these harms and their gender differences among Australian young adults at age 30. We aimed to examine gender differences of social harms from drinking as reported by drinkers. Methods 2,200 young adults at age 30 with com...

Retrospective studies have shown a high association between child abuse and subsequent psychiatric morbidity. Prospective studies are rarer with limited data at 30-year follow-up. This was a prospective record-linkage analysis to examine whether notified and/or substantiated child maltreatment was associated with adverse psychological outcomes in e...

Substantial genetic correlations have been reported across psychiatric disorders and numerous cross-disorder genetic variants have been detected. To identify the genetic variants underlying general psychopathology in childhood, we performed a genome-wide association study using a total psychiatric problem score. We analyzed 6,844,199 common SNPs in...

Purpose The current longitudinal study examines the temporal association between different types of intimate partner violence (IPV) at early adulthood (21 years) and subsequent depression and anxiety disorders in young adulthood (30 years). Methods Participants were from the Mater-University of Queensland Study of Pregnancy. A cohort of 1529 was a...

Background and aims: Despite legal age limits set for alcohol consumption, parents are one of the main suppliers of alcohol to underage minors. While supply from non-parental sources has been found to be associated with greater risk of harm compared with parental supply, the association between parental supply and supply from other sources is uncl...

Background and aims: Recent research suggests parental supply of alcohol is associated with more risky drinking and alcohol-related harm among adolescents. However, the overall effect of parental supply across adolescence remains unclear because parental supply of alcohol varies over adolescence. Due to the complexity of longitudinal data, standar...

Objective: A prospective record-linkage analysis to examine whether notified and/or substantiated child maltreatment is associated with the prevalence and persistence of smoking in early adulthood. Methods: The sample consisted of 3758 participants enrolled in a population-based birth cohort study in Brisbane, Australia, who were followed up at...

Background: While recent decades have witnessed an increase in the use of illicit drugs in Australia, the extent to which the types of drugs used has changed over a generation of young women has not been documented. Methods: Data are from a prospective birth cohort study. Mothers were recruited in early pregnancy (1981-83) and then they and thei...

Objective: To quantify the changes in sleep duration over two generations of young adults. Methods: We used data from the Mater-University of Queensland Study of Pregnancy cohort to compare sleep duration in mother and offspring. The analyses were restricted to 1,731 mothers who were young adults (mean age 21.96 years; SD±1.90) at the baseline m...

Background Human aggressive behavior (AGG) has a substantial genetic component. Here we present a large genome-wide association meta-analysis (GWAMA) of childhood AGG. Methods We analyzed assessments of AGG for a total of 328,935 observations from 87,485 children (aged 1.5 – 18 years), from multiple assessors, instruments, and ages, while accounti...

Aims: Understanding the social contexts in which problematic drinking occurs can inform prevention strategies. In this article, we investigate gender-specific social contexts associated with problematic drinking and depression among adults aged 30 years. Because depression has been consistently linked with harmful alcohol consumption, we will also...

Objective: To examine whether child maltreatment is associated with attentional problems in adolescence (14 years) and young adulthood (21 years), and whether outcomes depend on the type of maltreatment (sexual vs non-sexual). Methods: Data from a population based cohort study involving 3778 mother-child pairs were linked with data from the stat...

Cambridge Core - Sociology of Science and Medicine - The Social Origins of Health and Well-being - edited by Richard Eckersley

Background and aims: Most studies of the association between child maltreatment and subsequent problem alcohol use are retrospective. We studied the association of prospectively substantiated child maltreatment with problem alcohol use in adulthood. Design: We used a prospective cohort record linkage correlational design using data from a statut...

Background: Recent research has not supported the idea that parental supply of alcohol to adolescents prevents later alcohol-related harm. Yet the specific role of parental supply in shaping patterns of drinking over time remains unclear. This study investigated the role of parental supply of alcohol in patterns of drinking across adolescence, and...

Following publication of the original article [1], the authors opted to revise the first paragraph of the section “Characteristics associated with maternal drinking in pregnancy”. Below is the updated version.

This study examined whether body weight misclassification continues from adolescence to adulthood and the associated predictors behind that misclassification. Data are from a sample of a longitudinal Australian birth-cohort study. Data analyses were restricted to 2938 participants whose measured and perceived body weights were recorded during their...