Investigating the Path from Childhood Maltreatment to Alcohol Misuse in a Sample of Child Welfare-Involved Youth

• In Event: 2-143 - Adversity, Victimization, and Aggression: Longitudinal Impact on Children’s Health and Psychosocial Adaptation

Integrative Statement

Symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder and drinking to cope motives have both been identified as mediators in the relationship between trauma exposure and alcohol misuse. We assessed this relationship across the first two waves of a longitudinal study to extend emerging research suggesting that both PTSD symptoms and emotion management drinking motives serially mediate the relationship between childhood maltreatment and alcohol misuse. Five-hundred and sixty-four adolescents (54% female; mean [SD] age = 15.9 [1.1] years) in the care of child welfare services completed validated measures of childhood maltreatment (sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse, physical neglect, emotional neglect), PTSD symptoms, drinking motives, and alcohol misuse across the first two waves of the Maltreatment Adolescent Pathways (MAP) longitudinal study (i.e., baseline, six-months). Results supported a chained mediation model where childhood maltreatment was associated with elevated PTSD symptoms, which in turn predicted higher drinking to cope motives, which were associated with higher levels of alcohol misuse (indirect effect = .031; p = .038). Single mediator models for PTSD symptoms (indirect effect = .310; p = .304) and drinking to cope motives (indirect effect = -.016; p = .578) were not statistically significant. The results suggest that PTSD symptoms and drinking to cope motives are both necessary to explain the relationship between childhood maltreatment and alcohol misuse in a chained mediation model, thus extending the extant literature to adolescents in child welfare services and to a broader set of child maltreatment variables.

Authors

• Christine Wekerle, McMaster University
  Presenting Author

• Tristan Park, Dalhousie University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kara Thompson, St. Francis Xavier University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Mohammed Al-Hamdani, Dalhousie University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Savanah Smith, McMaster University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Amanda Hudson, Dalhousie University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Sherry H. Stewart, Dalhousie University
  Non-Presenting Author