The association between child maltreatment and shame: A meta-analysis

Although there is a growing body of evidence documenting the relationship between child maltreatment and its five types and shame, the direction and extent of these relationships are unclear.

This study aims to conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis to clarify the relationship between child maltreatment and its subtypes (physical abuse, physical neglect, emotional abuse, emotional neglect, and sexual abuse) and shame, providing evidence for social service professionals to understand the negative impacts of maltreatment and develop appropriate intervention strategies.

This systematic review included 16 studies with 5306 participants, with an average mean age of 28.65 years, of whom 64.5 % were female.

Four English and three Chinese databases were searched to collect quantitative research on the relationship between child maltreatment and shame. Correlation coefficients were used to test the association between child maltreatment and shame. Random-effect meta-analysis was used to obtain the effect size (r).

General child maltreatment was significantly and positively associated with shame (r = 0.40, p < 0.001). Subgroup analysis revealed it is the same with emotional abuse (r = 0.32, p < 0.001), sexual abuse (r = 0.18, p < 0.001), physical neglect (r = 0.25, p < 0.001), and emotional neglect (r = 0.22, p < 0.001), whilst the relation between physical abuse and shame was insignificant (r = 0.06, p > 0.05). The association between emotional abuse and shame is stronger than for other types of abuse. Additionally, no publication bias was found except physical neglect.

General child maltreatment and four of its five sub-types have significantly positive associations with shame. These findings suggest that interventions focusing on the reduction of shame might consider the victims' traumatic experience of child maltreatment and its impact on shame.