History of Childhood Maltreatment: Associations with Aggression and College Outcomes

ABSTRACT

About one-third of college students report a history of childhood maltreatment (CM) which may lead to heightened arousal and emotional dysregulation; thus, there is reason to hypothesize problems with aggression in this population. We examined the associations between CM and aggression and the associations of each with college outcomes. Three-hundred sixty-nine college participants completed self-report questionnaires on childhood maltreatment, aggression, and college adaptation with 158 meeting criteria for CM history. For all participants, we obtained documented GPA data. Results demonstrated group differences in aspects of aggression and social and personal-emotional college adjustment. We found significant associations between CM severity and the following: aggression, GPA, and personal-emotional college adjustment. Additionally, aggression was inversely related to various aspects of college adaptation. Participants’ self-reports of hostility and anger fully mediated the effect of emotional abuse on college personal-emotional adjustment, and partially mediated the effect of emotional neglect. CM severity, physical aggression and personal-emotional adjustment to college explained a larger proportion of variance in GPA in the CM group than in the Comparison group. These results indicate that a history of CM may give rise to heightened aggression contributing to low college adaptation and achievement, which may put students at risk for attrition.

KEYWORDS:

• Childhood maltreatment
• aggression
• college
• hostility
• adaptation
• achievement
• neglect
• emotional abuse

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by a grant from The Avielle Foundation. This article is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Jeremy Richman who established the Avielle Foundation to honor the memory of his daughter, Avielle. The mission of the Avielle Foundation is the prevention of violence through their support of research in neuroscience and public health. This project would not have been possible without their generous support.

Disclosure of interest

The authors have no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the authorship and/or publication of this article.

Ethical standards and informed consent

All procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation [institutional and national] and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000. Informed consent was obtained from all patients for being included in the study.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a grant from The Avielle Foundation