Laboratório de Neurofisiologia do Comportamento (LABNEC), Departamento de Fisiologia e Farmacologia, Instituto Biomédico, Universidade Federal Fluminense, Niterói, Brazil.
Laboratório Integrado de Pesquisa em Estresse, Instituto de Psiquiatria, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Av Venceslau Bras 71, Rio de Janeiro, 22290-140, Brazil.
BMC Psychiatry. 2021 Mar 17;21(1):156. doi: 10.1186/s12888-021-03134-0.
Childhood maltreatment (CM) is unfortunately widespread globally and has been linked with an increased risk of a variety of psychiatric disorders in adults, including posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). These associations are well established in the literature for some maltreatment forms, such as sexual and physical abuse. However, the effects of emotional maltreatment are much less explored, even though this type figures among the most common forms of childhood maltreatment. Thus, the present study aims to investigate the impact of each type of childhood maltreatment, both individually and conjointly, on revictimization and PTSD symptom severity using a nonclinical college student sample.
Five hundred and two graduate and undergraduate students participated in the study by completing questionnaires assessing lifetime traumatic experiences in general, maltreatment during childhood and PTSD symptoms. Bivariate and multivariate negative binomial regressions were applied to examine the associations among childhood maltreatment, revictimization, and PTSD symptom severity.
Our results showed that using bivariate models, all types of CM were significantly associated with revictimization and PTSD symptom severity. Multivariate models showed that emotional abuse was the type of maltreatment associated with the highest incidence rates of revictimization and PTSD symptom severity.
These data provide additional evidence of the harmful effects of childhood maltreatment and its long-term consequences for individuals' mental health. Notably, the findings highlight the importance of studying the impacts of emotional abuse, which seems to be a highly prevalent, understudied, and chronic form of maltreatment that is as toxic as other maltreatment forms.
儿童期虐待（CM）在全球范围内不幸非常普遍，并且与成年人多种精神障碍的风险增加有关，包括创伤后应激障碍（PTSD）。这些关联在文献中已经得到了一些虐待形式的证实，例如性虐待和身体虐待。然而，情感虐待的影响却鲜少被探讨，尽管这种形式是儿童期虐待中最常见的形式之一。因此，本研究旨在使用非临床大学生样本，调查每种类型的儿童虐待（单独和联合）对再受虐和 PTSD 症状严重程度的影响。
502 名研究生和本科生通过完成评估一般生活创伤经历、儿童期虐待和 PTSD 症状的问卷参与了研究。应用二变量和多变量负二项回归来检验儿童虐待、再受虐和 PTSD 症状严重程度之间的关联。
我们的结果表明，使用双变量模型，所有类型的 CM 与再受虐和 PTSD 症状严重程度显著相关。多变量模型表明，情感虐待是与再受虐和 PTSD 症状严重程度发生率最高相关的虐待类型。
这些数据为儿童虐待及其对个体心理健康的长期后果的有害影响提供了额外的证据。值得注意的是，这些发现强调了研究情感虐待影响的重要性，情感虐待似乎是一种普遍存在、研究不足且慢性的虐待形式，与其他虐待形式一样具有毒性。
