Childhood Maltreatment and Long-term Outcomes

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We certainly suspect that patients who have experienced abuse and neglect in early childhood sustain long-term effects of this maltreatment as they become teens and adults — but documentation has not been easy to find — at least until this week’s study by Jonson-Reid et al. (doi: 10.1542/peds.2011-2529). A cohort of more than 3,500 children with child maltreatment reports in 1993-94 was followed through 2009 for substance abuse, mental health problems, sexually transmitted infections, suicide attempts and violent delinquency, as well as perpetration of abuse on other children, and ongoing mental health and substance abuse issues as adults. The multivariate relationships of all of these outcomes with the initial reports makes for some troubling yet important reading and gets us all thinking about tertiary strategies to lessen the severity of the adult outcomes that can ensue as a result of child maltreatment.