[Validation of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire-Short Form in Chile]

Childhood Trauma Questionnaire-Short Form (CTQ-SF) is an instrument to assess child abuse and neglect Aim: to adapt and confirm the psychometric properties of the Spanish version of the CTQ-SF in Chile.

The CTQ-SF was applied to 89 clinically depressed subjects (77.5% women) who consulted at an outpatient mental health clinic. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), reliability (Cronbach's α) tests, and convergent validity analyses with clinical markers of complex depression were carried out.

The Chilean version of the CTQ-SF demonstrated an acceptable fit to a five-factor model, with adequate psychometric properties. The CFA revealed that a better fit to a five-factor model would be achieved after elimination of two items from the physical neglect scale, the less reliable scale of the questionnaire. The physical abuse scale discriminated between patients with a complex depression versus non-complex depression, and all the CTQ-SF's scales discriminated between patients with high suicide risk and/or history of psychiatric admissions versus those patients without this background.

the Chilean version of the CTQ-SF shows evidence of structural and discriminant validity, and reliability, in a clinical sample. Better alternatives to specifically assess the physical neglect construct should be developed.