Childhood abuse profiles and psychological distress in emerging adulthood: Gender differences across housing cost...

Childhood abuse experiences are predictors of psychological distress during emerging adulthood. However, important gaps remain in our understanding of the mental health consequences of childhood maltreatment, particularly with respect to the intersecting roles of gender differences and housing-cost burden, two critical social issues in contemporary society. By addressing this research gap, results can help establish empirical grounds for forming strategies to better clarify mental health needs for people facing compounded psychological-social-economic vulnerabilities.

To clarify psychological distress across combinations of childhood abuse profiles, gender, and housing-burden status.

Using the 2023 Transition into Adulthood Supplement (N = 2434), latent class analyses were applied to generate the main independent variable "childhood abuse experience patterns." Then, negative binomial models were applied to assess its associations with subsequent psychological distress while considering moderators.

For males, marginal effects show that distress peaks when housing burden co-exists with childhood abuse. For females, distress peaks with childhood abuse, even in the absence of housing burden. The association between childhood abuse experiences and later psychological distress is more prominent for females living with housing burden.

Findings highlight the complex interplay between early-life adversity due to childhood abuse experiences and current housing affordability and ownership in shaping people's mental health, underscoring the importance of developing trauma-informed interventions that recognize both homeownership and its housing burden could simultaneously modify one's early-life trauma differently for males and females. Housing burden could reinforce the association between childhood abuse experiences and subsequent psychological distress for females, even with homeownership.