The prevalence of family childhood adversities (FCAs) and their joint effects on the first onset of subsequent mental disorders throughout the life course are rarely examined, especially in Asian communities.

Face-to-face household interviews of 5201 people aged 18–70 years in Beijing and Shanghai were conducted by a multi-stage household probability sampling method. The first onsets of four broad groups of mental disorders and six categories of FCAs were assessed using The World Mental Health Composite International Diagnostic Interview (WMH-CIDI). Joint effects of FCAs were analyzed by the best fitting of several competitive multivariate models.

FCAs were highly prevalent and inter-correlated. Half of them were in a family-dysfunction cluster. The best-fitting model included each of six types of FCA (with family-dysfunction FCAs being the strongest predictors), number of family-dysfunction FCAs, and number of other FCAs. Family-dysfunction FCAs had a significant subadditive association with subsequent disorders. Little specificity was found for the effects of particular FCAs with particular disorders. Predictive effects of FCAs reached the highest in ages 13–24 compared to ages 4–12 and ⩾25. Estimates of population-attributable risk proportions indicated that all FCAs together explained 38.5% of all first-onset disorders.

Chinese children were exposed to a broad spectrum of inter-related FCAs, as found in Western countries. FCAs related to family dysfunction were especially associated with subsequent mental disorders. Biological and/or environmental factors that mediate these long-term effects should be studied in prospective research on broad groups of FCAs.