Abstract
Objectives
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.
Methods
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.
Results
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 (β = 0.23), anxiety (β = 0.21) and perceived stress (β = 0.23) in adulthood, validated particularly for emotional abuse and emotional neglect.
Conclusions
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.
Acknowledgements
We thank all study participants, and staff at the NAKO study centres, the data management and integration centre, and the NAKO head office who enabled the conduction of the study and made the collection of all data possible.
Statement of interest
H. J. Grabe has received travel grants and speakers honoraria from Fresenius Medical Care, Neuraxpharm, Servier and Janssen Cilag J. Deckert is the co-recipient of a grant of the Bavarian State Government to BioVariance and an investigator in a European grant to P1Vital.