More than sticks and stones: The long-term consequences of reported childhood maltreatment

Shalon MauRene Irving, Purdue University

Abstract

Scholars have demonstrated that early adversity, as opposed to adversity in later life, may be overwhelmingly deleterious. Childhood maltreatment is an early life adversity which has been associated with negative health outcomes ranging from increased psychopathology to increased incidence and severity of physical health conditions. Unfortunately, most studies have focused primarily on demonstrating the existence of these relationships in both the short- and long-term and have paid little attention to the specificity of the relationships and whether psychosocial resources are able to mediate the negative effects of maltreatment. Data for this study were drawn from the National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States (MIDUS), a nationally-representative random survey of individuals between the ages of 25 and 74. These data are unique in that they allow for the separate examination of maltreatment by mother and father, thus avoiding the common practice of aggregating the perpetrators of maltreatment into one category and masking potential differences. This dissertation is comprised of three individual projects which explore the long-term consequences of childhood maltreatment on health in adulthood. The first project addresses whether early maltreatment experience predicts stress-related illness in middle adulthood. Results indicate that physical maltreatment by parents was predictive of increased morbidity in adulthood; however this relationship differs based on both the gender of the responsible parent and the respondent. The second project extends this analysis by focusing on the consistency of the relationships between maltreatment and health across the life course. Analyses were conducted separately for younger and older men and women. Results show that the effects of both physical and emotional maltreatment remain consequential throughout the life course, but are contingent upon the gender of the respondent and the type of maltreatment under examination. The third project examines the relationship between childhood maltreatment and the use of complementary and alternative medicine---an area which has been virtually ignored in maltreatment studies. Individuals maltreated as children are more likely to use a number of unconventional therapies---it is, however, emotional maltreatment that emerges as the most stable predictor of use, for men and women.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Ferraro, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Families & family life|Personal relationships|Sociology|Gerontology|Developmental psychology|Physiological psychology

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