Childhood Abuse and Psychiatric Disorders Among Single and Married Mothers

Ellen Louise Lipman · Harriet L. MacMillan · Michael H. Boyle

53 citations0/0 files storedAmerican Journal of Psychiatry

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Child Abuse and Trauma Intimate Partner and Family Violence Child Welfare and Adoption

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: This study examined the prevalence of, and association between, childhood abuse and psychiatric disorders in single and married mothers. METHOD: Single and married mothers who participated in the Ontario Health Survey, a province-wide study derived from a probability sample of the general population of Ontario aged 15 years and older (N=1,471), were included. Sociodemographic and mental health characteristics were collected by means of interviewer-administered questionnaires. A self-administered questionnaire was used to collect information on childhood physical and sexual abuse. RESULTS: Compared with married mothers, single mothers reported substantially lower incomes as well as higher rates of childhood abuse and all psychiatric morbidities examined (current and lifetime affective or anxiety disorders and substance use disorders). Childhood abuse had a consistent and significant association with adult mental health, even when other risk variables were controlled. No interaction among childhood abuse and marital status and outcome was found. CONCLUSIONS: Single mothers reported more childhood abuse and experienced higher levels of poverty and psychiatric disorders than married mothers. Childhood abuse was associated with more psychiatric problems in both single and married mothers. Research, clinical, and policy implications of these findings are discussed.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 53 citations exist upstream.

References

1990Child abuse: Adolescent records vs. adult recall 1980Social Origins of Depression: A Study of Psychiatric Disorder in Women.1988The Composite International Diagnostic Interview 1997Accuracy of adult recollections of childhood victimization, Part 2: Childhood sexual abuse.1997Prevalence of Child Physical and Sexual Abuse in the Community 1996Accuracy of adult recollections of childhood victimization: Part 1. Childhood physical abuse.1995Physical and sexual abuse and associated mental disorders among alcoholic inpatients 1997Single mothers in Ontario: sociodemographic, physical and mental health characteristics.

Cited by

2003Stress, social support and depression in single and married mothers 2006Mental health profiles among married, never-married, and separated/divorced mothers in a nationally representative sample 2005No distinctions between different types of anxiety symptoms in pre-adolescents from the general population

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.