Search

The present study examined three empirically-derived childhood adversity dimensions as predictors of social, psychological, and symptom outcomes across three prospective assessments of a young adult sample. Participants were assessed five times over eight years with semi-structured interviews and questionnaires. The analyses used the dimensions underlying multiple subscales from well-established childhood adversity measures administered at the first two assessment waves (described in a previous report). Outcome data pertain to the last three assessment waves, with sample sizes ranging from 89 to 169. As hypothesized, the childhood adversity dimensions demonstrated overlapping and differential longitudinal associations with the outcomes. Deprivation predicted the negative (deficit-like) dimension of psychosis, while Threat and Intrafamilial Adversity predicted the positive (psychotic-like) dimension. Depression and anxiety symptoms were predicted by different childhood adversity dimensions over time. Furthermore, Threat predicted a smaller and less diverse social network, Intrafamilial Adversity predicted anxious attachment, and Deprivation predicted a smaller social network, anxious and avoidant attachment, perceived social support, and loneliness. The three adversity dimensions combined accounted for moderate to large proportions of variance in several outcomes. These results extend prior work by identifying associations of three meaningful dimensions of childhood adversity with different risk profiles across psychological, social, and psychopathological domains. The findings enhance our understanding of the impact of childhood adversity across young adulthood., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that there are no conflicts of interest to be disclosed., (Copyright © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Background: Investigating different approaches to operationalizing childhood adversity and how they relate to transdiagnostic psychopathology is relevant to advance research on mechanistic processes and to inform intervention efforts. To our knowledge, previous studies have not used questionnaire and interview measures of childhood adversity to examine factor-analytic and cumulative-risk approaches in a complementary manner. Objective: The first aim of this study was to identify the dimensions underlying multiple subscales from three well-established childhood adversity measures (the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire, the Childhood Experience of Care and Abuse Interview, and the Interview for Traumatic Events in Childhood) and to create a cumulative risk index based on the resulting dimensions. The second aim of the study was to examine the childhood adversity dimensions and the cumulative risk index as predictors of measures of depression, anxiety, and psychosis-spectrum psychopathology. Method: Participants were 214 nonclinically ascertained young adults who were administered questionnaire and interview measures of depression, anxiety, psychosis-spectrum phenomena, and childhood adversity. Results: Four childhood adversity dimensions were identified that captured experiences in the domains of Intrafamilial Adversity, Deprivation, Threat, and Sexual Abuse. As hypothesized, the adversity dimensions demonstrated some specificity in their associations with psychopathology symptoms. Deprivation was uniquely associated with the negative symptom dimension of psychosis (negative schizotypy and schizoid symptoms), Intrafamilial Adversity with schizotypal symptoms, and Threat with depression, anxiety, and psychosis-spectrum symptoms. No associations were found with the Sexual Abuse dimension. Finally, the cumulative risk index was associated with all the outcome measures. Conclusions: The findings support the use of both the empirically-derived adversity dimensions and the cumulative risk index and suggest that these approaches may facilitate different research objectives. This study contributes to our understanding of the complexity of childhood adversity and its links to different expressions of psychopathology. We investigated how different approaches to operationalizing childhood adversity relate to transdiagnostic psychopathology. Four childhood adversity dimensions were found to underlie multiple subscales from three well-established childhood adversity measures. The childhood adversity dimensions demonstrated some specificity in their associations with the psychopathology symptom domains and the cumulative risk index was associated with all the outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]