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Childhood Maltreatment and Mental Health Problems: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Quasi-Experimental
Jessie R Baldwin1, Biyao Wang1, Lucy Karwatowska1
1Department of Clinical, Educational, and Health Psychology, Division of Psychology and Language Sciences, University College London (Baldwin, Wang, Schoeler, Tsaligopoulou, Pingault); Social, Genetic, and Developmental Psychiatry Centre, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology, and Neuroscience, King's College London (Baldwin, Pingault); Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health, University College London (Karwatowska); Department of Computational Biology, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland (Schoeler); Child Study Center, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Conn. (Tsaligopoulou); MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit at the University of Bristol, Bristol Medical School, University of Bristol, School of Psychological Science, University of Bristol, and NIHR Biomedical Research Centre, University Hospitals Bristol NHS Foundation Trust and University of Bristol, Bristol, U.K. (Munafò).
Objective:
Childhood maltreatment is associated with mental health problems, but the extent to which this relationship is causal remains unclear. To strengthen causal inference, the authors conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of quasi-experimental studies examining the relationship between childhood maltreatment and mental health problems.
Methods:
A search of PubMed, PsycINFO, and Embase was conducted for peer-reviewed, English-language articles from database inception until January 1, 2022. Studies were included if they examined the association between childhood maltreatment and mental health problems using a quasi-experimental method (e.g., twin/sibling differences design, children of twins design, adoption design, fixed-effects design, random-intercept cross-lagged panel model, natural experiment, propensity score matching, or inverse probability weighting).
Results:
Thirty-four quasi-experimental studies were identified, comprising 54,646 independent participants. Before quasi-experimental adjustment for confounding, childhood maltreatment was moderately associated with mental health problems (Cohen's d=0.56, 95% CI=0.41, 0.71). After quasi-experimental adjustment, a small association between childhood maltreatment and mental health problems remained (Cohen's d=0.31, 95% CI=0.24, 0.37). This adjusted association between childhood maltreatment and mental health was consistent across different quasi-experimental methods, and generalized across different psychiatric disorders.
Conclusions:
These findings are consistent with a small, causal contribution of childhood maltreatment to mental health problems. Furthermore, the findings suggest that part of the overall risk of mental health problems in individuals exposed to maltreatment is due to wider genetic and environmental risk factors. Therefore, preventing childhood maltreatment and addressing wider psychiatric risk factors in individuals exposed to maltreatment could help to prevent psychopathology.
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