Childhood Maltreatment and the Clinical Characteristics of Major Depressive Disorder in Adolescence and Adulthood

Childhood maltreatment is widely implicated as the strongest developmental risk factor for depression onset. The current research is novel in examining the fine-grained associations of childhood emotional versus physical versus sexual maltreatment to indices of the severity, course, and presence of anxiety and trauma-related psychopathology in depression. An amalgamation across 6 previous investigations resulted in a sample of 575 adolescents and adults (76% female; age range 12-70, M = 27.88, SD = 13.58). All participants were in a current episode of a unipolar depressive disorder. Retrospective reports of childhood maltreatment were assessed using a rigorous contextual interview with independent, standardized ratings. Higher levels of emotional maltreatment and/or sexual maltreatment emerged as significantly associated with greater depression severity, number of previous episodes, and risk for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and were significantly more strongly associated with these characteristics than was physical maltreatment. Further, emotional maltreatment perpetrated by mothers was significantly associated with depression severity and history. whereas emotional maltreatment perpetrated by fathers was significantly associated with a greater risk of PTSD. These latter results suggest that prevention and intervention efforts may need to focus on the unique roles of mothers versus fathers on the development of depressive- versus threat-related psychopathology, respectively.