The Effects of Emotional Abuse on Maternal Depression over the Transition to Parenthood

• In Event: Poster Session 10
  In Poster Session: PS 10 Topic - Family Context & Processes

Abstract

Survivors of childhood emotional abuse suffer long-term consequences in social and mental health domains. Experiencing childhood emotional abuse has been shown to be a risk factor for adult depression in the face of stressful events (Shapero et al., 2014). This study recognizes the transition to parenthood is a potentially relevant and important stressor that increases the likelihood of depressive symptoms for those who have experienced emotional abuse.

As a part of a larger study on the transition to parenthood, 126 primiparous women completed a battery of tests during their third trimester, when their infant was 8 months old, and when their toddler was 24 months old. During their pregnancy, women completed the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI), a semi-structured interview that asks participants to discuss important relationships and interpersonal experiences in their childhood. These interviews were coded for attachment orientation, as well as on a continuous qualitative coding system of childhood emotional abuse (Author 1, 2019) and physical abuse (Authors 2 and 3, 2004). Measures of depressive symptoms (CES-D) were also collected during the third trimester, and then again when the child was 8 months old and 24 months old.

A path analysis within a structural equation modeling (SEM) framework was conducted using Mplus 7.4 (Muthén & Muthén, 1998-2015). Childhood emotional abuse, childhood physical abuse, and prenatal depressive symptoms were modeled as predictors of postnatal depression (8 months postpartum). Depressive symptoms reported by mothers 8 months postpartum were examined for their direct effects on maternal depressive symptoms 24 months postpartum. Because disclosures on the Adult Attachment Interview are affected by an individual’s attachment orientation (Author 1, 2019), the effects of attachment orientations (i.e. dismissing and preoccupied, with secure-autonomous attachment serving as a reference group) on disclosures of child abusive experiences were controlled for.

Childhood emotional abuse (β = .24, p = .016) and antenatal depressive symptoms (β = .31, p < .001) had direct effects on postnatal depression 8 months postpartum, such that those with more abusive experiences, and those with more antenatal depressive symptoms, reported more postnatal depressive symptoms. Interestingly, experiencing childhood physical maltreatment was unrelated to postnatal depression. As expected, more depressive symptoms 8 months postpartum was related to more depressive symptoms at 24 months (β = .29, p = .002).

This study recognizes that the transition to first-time parenthood as an interpersonal stressor, and that this transition was especially difficult for women who had experienced emotional abuse in childhood. Given that childhood emotional abuse, and not childhood physical abuse, had direct effects on postnatal depression adds more evidence that emotional abuse may act as the core trauma of childhood abuse.

Authors

• Ashleigh Iris Aviles, New York University
  Presenting Author

• Nancy Lynn Hazen, University of Texas at Austin
  Non-Presenting Author

• Deborah B Jacobvitz, University of Texas at Austin
  Non-Presenting Author