The prevalence of childhood trauma in psychiatric outpatients

The aim of this present study was to compare the prevalence and type of trauma experienced by community sample with the outpatient sample with mental disorders.

A total of 354 outpatients, aged 14-35 years old, with mood disorders, schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders, adjustment disorder and anxiety disorder were recruited from a tertiary psychiatric hospital. A total of 100 healthy controls were recruited from the Singapore general population by snowballing. The Childhood Trauma Questionnaire-Short Form (CTQ-SF) designed to measure childhood trauma and the severity (e.g., physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, physical neglect and emotional neglect) was administered to participants. Socio-demographic and clinical characteristics were obtained from interviews with the participants and from outpatients' medical records, respectively. Independent sample t tests and Chi-square tests were used to investigate the differences between the outpatient and community samples.

Overall the CTQ-SF total and domain scores indicated that outpatient sample experienced higher rate of traumatic life events in childhood than community sample. Two most reported trauma types were emotional abuse (n = 81, 59.1%) and physical neglect (n = 74, 54%) reported by the mood disorder group. In the community sample, emotional neglect (n = 46, 46%) and physical neglect (n = 18, 18%) were the most commonly reported trauma type. Overall outpatient sample (n = 80, 22.6%) and community sample (n = 28, 28%) reported at least one type of trauma.

The findings indicate higher rates of CTQ-SF total and domain scores in outpatient sample demonstrating a higher rate of traumatic life events in childhood compared to community sample. Further research in childhood trauma is needed to improve the knowledge in psychiatric clinic practices.