Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Medicine Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany.
Department of Genetic Epidemiology in Psychiatry, Central Institute of Mental Health, University of Heidelberg, Medical Faculty Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany.
World J Biol Psychiatry. 2023 Dec;24(10):897-908. doi: 10.1080/15622975.2021.2011406. Epub 2022 Mar 18.
Childhood maltreatment affects 20-30% of the German population and is an important risk factor for physical and mental diseases in adult life. This study reports first results of the distribution of childhood maltreatment in the population-based mega cohort German National Cohort (NAKO) and estimates associations with affective symptoms in adulthood.
The Childhood Trauma Screener (CTS), a short version of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire, was used in 83,995 adults (age: 20-72 years; 47.3% men) of NAKO. The five-item CTS assesses the severity of three types of childhood abuse and two types of childhood neglect.
Overall, 21,131 participants (27.5%) reported at least one type of childhood maltreatment; 14,017 participants (18.3%) reported exactly one type and 250 participants (0.3%) reported all five types of childhood maltreatment. Small differences regarding age (mean absolute deviation around the mean (MAD)=0.47), sex (MAD = 0.07) and education (MAD = 0.82) were observed. The severity of childhood maltreatment was associated with more severe symptoms of depression ( = 0.23), anxiety ( = 0.21) and perceived stress ( = 0.23) in adulthood, validated particularly for emotional abuse and emotional neglect.
The distribution of childhood maltreatment in NAKO is similar to previous reports. Additionally, our results suggest differential associations with psychopathological symptoms for the five types of childhood maltreatment.
儿童期虐待影响了 20-30%的德国人口，是成年后患身心疾病的重要危险因素。本研究报告了基于人群的德国国家队列（NAKO）中儿童期虐待的分布情况，并估计了其与成年期情感症状的关联。
采用儿童期创伤筛查器（CTS），即儿童期创伤问卷的简短版本，对 NAKO 中的 83995 名成年人（年龄 20-72 岁；47.3%为男性）进行了调查。该五项目 CTS 评估了三种类型的儿童虐待和两种类型的儿童忽视的严重程度。
总体而言，21131 名参与者（27.5%）报告了至少一种类型的儿童期虐待；14017 名参与者（18.3%）报告了恰好一种类型，250 名参与者（0.3%）报告了所有五种类型的儿童期虐待。在年龄（平均值的绝对偏差（MAD）=0.47）、性别（MAD=0.07）和教育程度（MAD=0.82）方面观察到微小差异。儿童期虐待的严重程度与成年后抑郁症状（ =0.23）、焦虑症状（ =0.21）和感知压力（ =0.23）的严重程度相关，对情感虐待和情感忽视的验证尤为显著。
NAKO 中儿童期虐待的分布与之前的报告相似。此外，我们的结果表明，五种类型的儿童期虐待与心理病理症状的关联存在差异。
