Department of Psychology, University of Gothenburg, Box 500, 40530 Gothenburg, Sweden.
Child Abuse Negl. 2017 May;67:249-259. doi: 10.1016/j.chiabu.2017.02.033.
Emotional maltreatment is a common form of child abuse with a powerful negative impact on mental health. The aim of this study was to examine the effect of emotional maltreatment on mental health and mental well-being in a general population of Swedish 12- to 13-year old girls and boys. Data was collected via self-report questionnaires in classroom settings from 1134 students. Emotional maltreatment had significant effects on mental health and mental well-being for both girls and boys. Moreover, there were significant interaction effects between gender and levels of emotional maltreatment. Girls reported decreased mental health and mental well-being at lower degrees of emotional maltreatment compared to boys. Furthermore, girls reported larger decreases in mental health in response to exposure of emotional maltreatment. For internalizing symptoms, mental well-being and psychosomatic symptoms, exposure level of emotional maltreatment seemed to magnify the gender differences. For externalizing symptoms, there were no differences between girls and boys in the group reporting no emotional maltreatment and the increase in externalizing symptoms were of equal magnitude for both genders. Given the impact of emotional maltreatment on mental health in the general population, results from this study implies that a trauma-informed perspective is necessary in understanding gender differences in mental health in early adolescence. Further research is needed in order to understand the underlying processes generating the differences in girls and boys responses to emotional maltreatment.
情感虐待是一种常见的虐待儿童形式，对心理健康有很强的负面影响。本研究旨在考察情感虐待对瑞典 12 至 13 岁女孩和男孩普通人群心理健康和心理幸福感的影响。通过课堂环境中的自我报告问卷收集了 1134 名学生的数据。情感虐待对女孩和男孩的心理健康和心理幸福感都有显著影响。此外，性别和情感虐待程度之间存在显著的交互作用。与男孩相比，女孩在较低程度的情感虐待下报告心理健康和心理幸福感下降。此外，女孩在受到情感虐待时报告心理健康下降幅度更大。对于内化症状、心理幸福感和心身症状，情感虐待的暴露程度似乎放大了性别差异。对于外化症状，在没有情感虐待报告的组中，女孩和男孩之间没有差异，而且两种性别对外化症状的增加幅度相同。鉴于情感虐待对普通人群心理健康的影响，本研究的结果表明，在理解青少年早期心理健康方面，需要从创伤知情的角度来看待性别差异。需要进一步研究，以了解女孩和男孩对情感虐待的反应差异产生的潜在过程。
