Emotional Abuse in Childhood Is a Differential Factor for the Development of Depression in Adults

Camila Maria Severi Martins · Cristiane von Werne Baes · Sandra Márcia de Carvalho Tofoli · Mário F. Juruena

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Child Abuse and Trauma Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development Child Welfare and Adoption

Abstract

We evaluate the association between subtypes of early life stress (ELS; sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse, physical neglect, and emotional neglect) and psychiatric disorders in adults. The sample was composed of 81 adult psychiatric patients treated at the Day Hospital Unit in Brazil. The patients were assessed using the Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview according to diagnostic criteria of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition. The presence of ELS was confirmed by the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire, which investigates abuse and neglect subtypes. The patients were also evaluated for the severity of psychiatric symptoms through self-report questionnaires. A total of 71.6% of the patients experienced some type of severe ELS compared with 28.4% of the patients without ELS. Of these, 55.5% reported having experienced emotional abuse; 48.1%, physical neglect; 45.7%, emotional neglect; 39.5%, physical abuse; and 27.2%, sexual abuse. Our data showed that, among the ELS subtypes, emotional abuse was positively associated with psychopathology in adults, particularly with mood disorders (p < 0.05). The patients with a history of emotional abuse had higher severity scores in all symptoms, such as depression, hopelessness, suicidal ideation, anxiety, and impulsivity. These data demonstrate the impact of ELS, especially in cases of emotional abuse, as a trigger for psychiatric disorders and indicate that the severity of ELS is associated with severity of psychiatric symptoms. Therefore, further studies are needed to assess the importance of emotional abuse as a risk factor of severe psychopathology in adults.

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References

1983The Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale 1961An Inventory for Measuring Depression 1998The Mini-International Neuropsychiatric Interview (M.I.N.I.): the development and validation of a structured diagnostic psychiatric interview for DSM-IV and ICD-10 1988An inventory for measuring clinical anxiety: Psychometric properties.1995Factor structure of the barratt impulsiveness scale 2003Development and validation of a brief screening version of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire 1974The measurement of pessimism: The Hopelessness Scale.1994Initial reliability and validity of a new retrospective measure of child abuse and neglect

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