Peer-reviewed article
Child Maltreatment and The Psychological Consequences of COVID-19 for Older Adults
Bruefach T, Carr D, Sachs-Ericsson N ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This peer-reviewed study examines how child maltreatment experiences affect older adults' mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic. The research uses data from older adults measured before and during the pandemic to show that those who experienced emotional neglect or emotional abuse in childhood had greater increases in depression. The study suggests that early life trauma influences how people cope with major stressors in later life.
Key points
- Emotional neglect in childhood was associated with a 1.630-point increase in depression scores during the pandemic (p < 0.001)
- Emotional abuse in childhood was associated with a 0.670-point increase in depression scores during the pandemic (p < 0.05)
- Exposure to multiple forms of childhood maltreatment compounded negative psychological health consequences
- The study used a community sample of older adults measured in September 2018 and June 2020
Limitations
The study focuses on older adults and measures changes during the early pandemic period, so findings may not generalize to children or younger populations. The document does not specify which country or countries the sample was drawn from.
Abstract
Abstract Traumatic experiences in early life impact adults’ well-being and their abilities to respond to adversities over the life course. Child maltreatment is a particularly salient stressor in childhood and scholars have noted the psychological implications of such experiences that extend into late life. People who experienced maltreatment in childhood have more difficulty maintaining and developing high quality relationships, regulating their emotions, and they engage in poorer coping behaviors amidst major stressors. Our study focuses on how child maltreatment (i.e., emotional abuse; physical abuse; sexual abuse; emotional neglect) shaped older adults’ changes in depression during the early stages of the COVID-19 Pandemic. Using a dataset released in 2021, based on a community sample of older adults collected in September 2018 and June 2020, we found that exposures to emotional neglect (1.630; p < 0.001) and emotional abuse (0.670; p < 0.05) in childhood were both associated with increases in depression scores in association with the pandemic, relative to those without such exposures. In addition, the more forms of maltreatment that individuals were exposed to in childhood, the more they experienced negative psychological health consequences in association with the pandemic. Our results suggest that early life traumas play a role in how older adults respond to stressful situations. Clinical treatments for depression may be more effective if they take into consideration how these early life experiences influence exposures to new stressors in later life.