Effects of maltreatment across the life course and across generations

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Abstract

This symposium focuses on how childhood abuse and neglect has broad consequences for sleep quality, social-cognitive processes, and psychopathology in childhood and adulthood. These studies have a number of methodological strengths. Two of the studies use data from a prospective, longitudinal study of children with substantiated cases of abuse and neglect and a demographically matched control group who were followed into adulthood. The design of the study allows for clear temporal ordering of exposures and outcomes and the matched control group allows for stronger inferences about the role of maltreatment on risk for psychopathology, separate from that of correlated risk factors. The third study used PRISMA guidelines to identify eligible studies for a meta-analysis of the association between childhood maltreatment and alexithymia – the ability to understand one’s own emotions. These studies identify potential pathways by which childhood maltreatment increases risk for psychopathology in adulthood (e.g., via poor childhood and adult sleep quality; via impairments in social-cognitive processes) as well as conditions under which adverse sequelae of childhood maltreatment are disrupted. Finally, these studies identify differential effects of different forms of maltreatment with, for example, emotional abuse and neglect being more strongly associated with the ability to understand one’s own emotions and physical abuse being more strongly associated with sleep disturbances in childhood and adulthood than other forms of maltreatment. These studies have implications for clinical interventions to improve psychosocial functioning in children who have experienced maltreatment, and they also highlight the need for maltreatment prevention programs.

Sub Unit

• Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Chair

• Sara R Jaffee, University of Pennsylvania

Discussant

• Kristin L Bernard, Stony Brook University

Individual Presentations

• Alexithymia in maltreated children and adolescents: A meta-analysis - Presenting Author: Anika Khan, University of Pennsylvania; Non-Presenting Author: Sara R Jaffee, University of Pennsylvania

• Childhood maltreatment, sleep disturbances, and psychiatric symptoms: A prospective longitudinal investigation - Presenting Author: Magda Javakhishvili, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York; Non-Presenting Author: Cathy Spatz Widom, John Jay College

• Breaking the cycle of intergenerational childhood maltreatment: Effects on offspring mental health - Presenting Author: Samiha Islam, University of Pennsylvania; Non-Presenting Author: Sara R Jaffee, University of Pennsylvania; Non-Presenting Author: Cathy Spatz Widom, John Jay College