Child abuse linked to later mental health disorders

TORONTO — One in three adult Canadians suffered some form of child abuse in their past, experiences that put them at a higher risk of developing mental health disorders later in life, a study reports.

It paints the first nationwide picture of the prevalence of child abuse experienced by Canadian adults, lead author Tracie Afifi said of the study, published Tuesday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

She and her co-authors analyzed information collected from more than 23,000 adults 18 and older who took part in Statistics Canada’s 2012 Canadian Community Health Survey. Respondents were asked about whether they were hit or subjected to other physical or sexual abuse in childhood, or whether they were exposed to violence between the adults in their homes.

They also were asked whether they suffered from a variety of mental health disorders. Researchers found a strong correlation between experiencing abuse in childhood and having mental health disorders in adulthood.

“As a Canadian, I find the number to be very large and alarming,” said Afifi, associate professor in the department of community health sciences at the University of Manitoba. “As a child-maltreatment researcher, that’s the number I expected to see.”

One in three adults reported at least one type of abuse, with physical abuse the most common of the three; 26 per cent of respondents said they had experienced physical abuse. Ten per cent of respondents said they had experienced sexual abuse, and nearly eight per cent witnessed intimate partner violence.

Men were more likely than women to have experienced physical abuse, 31 per cent versus 21 per cent. Women were more likely to have experienced sexual abuse, 14 per cent versus nearly six per cent.

About nine per cent of women and seven per cent of men reported seeing intimate partner violence.

People who reported experiencing all three types of abuse were 27 times more likely to have attempted suicide, 17 times more likely to have posttraumatic stress disorder and nearly 11 per cent more likely to have a drug dependency or an eating disorder.

Even those who had experienced only one type of abuse were nearly two to four times more likely to have one or some of the various disorders.

People who suffered some form of abuse as children are more likely to develop mental-health problems later, a study says.