Comparative relationships between physical and verbal abuse of children, life course mental well-being and trends in exposure: a multi-study secondary analysis of cross-sectional surveys in England and Wales
Abstract
Objectives To test associations between mental well-being across the life course and exposure to childhood physical and/or verbal abuse. Design Secondary analysis of combined data from seven cross-sectional general adult population surveys measuring childhood experience of physical and/or verbal abuse and current mental well-being. Setting Households across England and Wales. Participants 20 687 residents in England and Wales aged 18 years or over. Measures Self-reported childhood physical and verbal abuse using questions from an Adverse Childhood Experiences tool. Individual and combined components of adult mental well-being measured using the short Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale (SWEMWBS). Results Exposure to either childhood physical abuse or verbal abuse was associated independently with a similar significant increase in likelihood of low adult mental well-being, with exposure to both abuse types compounding increases (adjusted ORs 1.52, 1.64, 2.15 respectively, reference category: neither abuse type). Individual components of mental well-being showed similar associations, with adjusted prevalence of never or rarely having felt close to people in the last 2 weeks rising from 7.7% (neither abuse type) to 9.9% (physical abuse), 13.6% (verbal abuse) and 18.2% (both types of abuse). Within sample trends showed a significant drop in the prevalence of child physical abuse from around 20% in those born from 1950 to 1979 to 10% in those born in 2000 or after. However,…
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