Citation

Bartels M, Middeldorp CM. Am. J. Psychiatry 2023; 180(2): 105-107.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2023, American Psychiatric Association)

DOI

10.1176/appi.ajp.20220969

PMID

36722120

Abstract

Accumulating evidence supports the observed association between childhood maltreatment and mental health. Review studies and meta-analyses consistently report associations between different forms of childhood maltreatment and various forms of mental problems (1-7). The next question is whether this association is causal. This knowledge is crucial to inform prevention and intervention strategies. While it seems likely that mental health problems are directly caused by childhood maltreatment, other (environmental) risk factors and genetic effects can also play a role. For example, both socioeconomic disadvantage (8, 9) and genetic predisposition--for example, in the form of higher polygenic risk scores for mental disorders (10-12)--have been reported to explain part of the association between childhood maltreatment and mental health.

A study in this issue by Baldwin et al. (13) concludes that preventing childhood maltreatment could help to prevent psychopathology, but that it is also important to focus on other factors that also partly explain the association. This conclusion is based on their systematic review and meta-analysis of quasi-experimental studies examining the relationship between childhood maltreatment and mental health problems. The focus on quasi-experimental designs enabled the disentanglement of causal effects from effects from other environmental and genetic factors...

Language: en

Keywords

Child; Humans; *Child Abuse; *Mental Health; Child/Adolescent Psychiatry; Environmental Risk Factors; Genetics/Genomics; Violence/Aggression