Childhood experiences of abuse and neglect: links with different psychopathology symptom dimensions in a Mexican sample

Abstract

Background: The mental health impact of different forms of childhood maltreatment remains understudied in low- and middle-income countries.Objective: This study used a Mexican sample to examine the associations of five childhood maltreatment subtypes (emotional, physical, and sexual abuse, and emotional and physical neglect) with psychopathology symptoms encompassing depression, anxiety, posttraumatic stress, and domains of the psychosis spectrum.Method: Participants were 1,612 adults from the general population (Mage = 30.3 years, SDage = 8.1 years; mostly women [79.4%], with a high school education or higher [97%], currently working [55.8%] or studying [30.7%]) who completed self-report measures of depression, anxiety, posttraumatic stress, positive psychotic experiences, multidimensional (positive, negative, and disorganised) schizotypy, and childhood maltreatment.Results: Linear regression analyses examining the unique association of the childhood maltreatment subtypes with the outcome measures indicated that emotional abuse was associated with all the outcomes except negative schizotypy. In addition, emotional neglect was associated with negative and disorganised schizotypy and symptoms of depression and anxiety, and sexual abuse was associated with posttraumatic stress symptoms.Conclusions: The findings contribute to efforts to elucidate patterns of association between childhood maltreatment and mental health outcomes across diverse contexts. Furthermore, they point to the need for increased attention to the impact of emotional maltreatment in low- and middle-income countries.