A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of the Association Between Childhood Maltreatment and Adult Depression

IF 5.3 2区医学 Q1 PSYCHIATRY

Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica Pub Date : 2025-03-03 DOI:10.1111/acps.13794

Christopher B. Watson, Christopher F. Sharpley, Vicki Bitsika, Ian Evans, Kirstan Vessey

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Introduction

Childhood maltreatment (CM) and depression are serious global issues with high prevalence and lifelong impacts on physical and mental health. CM has been proposed as a modifiable risk factor for depression that, if prevented, may contribute to a reduction in the global incidence of depressive disorders. Despite this, there is a paucity of reviews examining the strength of the association between these variables. The aim of this systematic review and meta-analysis was to evaluate the empirical evidence and determine if CM is supported as a preventable risk factor for depression.

Methods

A search was performed in July 2024 for all peer-reviewed journal articles written in English examining the relationship between CM and adult depression in the electronic databases EBSCOhost, Proquest, and Embase. Studies were included in this review if they measured maltreatment before 18 years of age as the independent variable and adult depression as the dependent variable. Studies were excluded if the outcome variable was grouped with comorbidity and if they did not report primary quantitative data. A total of 77 studies with 516,302 participants met the inclusion criteria for review.

Results

A random-effects meta-analysis was used to generate a pooled odds ratio from 87 effect estimates and demonstrated that individuals with a history of any CM are 2.5 times more likely to experience adult depression (OR = 2.49 [95% CI: 2.25–2.76]). This increase in odds remained regardless of how the primary studies screened for depression.

Conclusions

These findings confirmed the strong association between the experience of CM and adult depression. High heterogeneity in the meta-analytic results also suggested that further research is required that applies consistent adjustments for comorbidities and confounding factors and examines the temporal relationship between the variables to establish causality.

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导言：儿童虐待（CM）和抑郁症是严重的全球性问题，发病率高，对身心健康造成终生影响。儿童虐待被认为是抑郁症的一个可改变的风险因素，如果加以预防，可能有助于降低全球抑郁症的发病率。尽管如此，研究这些变量之间关联强度的综述仍然很少。本系统综述和荟萃分析旨在评估实证证据，确定中医是否被支持为可预防的抑郁症风险因素：我们于 2024 年 7 月在电子数据库 EBSCOhost、Proquest 和 Embase 中检索了所有经同行评审的英文期刊文章，这些文章研究了 CM 与成人抑郁症之间的关系。如果研究以 18 岁前的虐待行为作为自变量，以成人抑郁作为因变量，则纳入本综述。如果研究结果变量与合并症归为一组，或者没有报告主要定量数据，则排除在外。共有 77 项研究、516302 名参与者符合纳入标准：采用随机效应荟萃分析法从 87 个效应估计值中得出了一个汇总的几率比，结果表明，有任何中风病史的人患成人抑郁症的几率是普通人的 2.5 倍（OR = 2.49 [95% CI：2.25-2.76]）。无论主要研究如何筛查抑郁症，这种几率增加的情况依然存在：这些研究结果证实了中医治疗经历与成年抑郁症之间的密切联系。荟萃分析结果的高度异质性也表明，还需要进一步的研究，对合并症和混杂因素进行一致的调整，并检查变量之间的时间关系，以确定因果关系。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica 医学-精神病学

CiteScore

11.20

自引率

3.00%

发文量

135

审稿时长

6-12 weeks

期刊介绍： Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica acts as an international forum for the dissemination of information advancing the science and practice of psychiatry. In particular we focus on communicating frontline research to clinical psychiatrists and psychiatric researchers. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica has traditionally been and remains a journal focusing predominantly on clinical psychiatry, but translational psychiatry is a topic of growing importance to our readers. Therefore, the journal welcomes submission of manuscripts based on both clinical- and more translational (e.g. preclinical and epidemiological) research. When preparing manuscripts based on translational studies for submission to Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, the authors should place emphasis on the clinical significance of the research question and the findings. Manuscripts based solely on preclinical research (e.g. animal models) are normally not considered for publication in the Journal.