Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

Gender-specific profiles of adverse childhood experiences, past year mental and substance use disorders, and their associations among a national sample of adults in the United States

  • Original Paper
  • Published:
Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Purpose

This study examined profiles of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and mental and substance use disorders (MSUDs), and associations between distinct profiles of ACEs and MSUDs.

Methods

Participants were adults (N = 34, 652) involved in the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions. Latent class analysis was used to examine both profiles of ten ACEs and ten past year MSUDs. Dual latent class analysis regression was used to examine associations between profiles of ACEs and MSUDs. Given gender differences in ACEs and MSUDs, analyses were conducted separately for females and males.

Results

Four profiles of ACEs and three profiles of MSUDs were selected for both genders. The four profiles of ACEs were characterized by the following probabilities: high multiple ACEs, high parental substance abuse, high childhood physical abuse, and low ACEs. The three profiles of MSUDs were characterized by the following probabilities: high multiple MSUDs for females and low MSUDs except alcohol use disorders for males, moderate-to-high major depressive episode, and low MSUDs. When compared to the low ACEs and MSUDs profiles, members in the higher ACEs profiles had 3.71–89.75 times greater odds of also being members in the higher MSUDs profiles. However, more than one-third of members in the high multiple ACEs profiles were also in the low MSUDs profiles.

Conclusions

Study findings suggest four profiles of the ACEs widely studied as part of the Adverse Childhood Experiences study and risk and resilience for recent MSUDs among men and women nationally affected by ACEs.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Molnar BE, Buka SL, Kessler RC (2001) Child sexual abuse and subsequent psychopathology: results from the National Comorbidity Survey. Am J Public Health 91(5):753–760

    Article  CAS  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  2. Sugaya L, Hasin DS, Olfson M, Lin K-H, Grant BF, Blanco C (2012) Child physical abuse and adult mental health: a national study. J Trauma Stress 25(4):384–392. doi:10.1002/jts.21719

    Article  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  3. McLaughlin KA, Gadermann AM, Hwang I, Sampson NA, Al-Hamzawi A, Andrade LH, Angermeyer MC, Benjet C, Bromet EJ, Bruffaerts R, Caldas-de-Almeida JM, de Girolamo G, de Graaf R, Florescu S, Gureje O, Haro JM, Hinkov HR, Horiguchi I, Hu C, Karam AN, Kovess-Masfety V, Lee S, Murphy SD, Nizamie S, Posada-Villa J, Williams DR, Kessler RC (2012) Parent psychopathology and offspring mental disorders: results from the WHO World Mental Health Surveys. Br J Psychiatry 200(4):290–299. doi:10.1192/bjp.bp.111.101253

    Article  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  4. Kessler RC, McLaughlin KA, Green JG, Gruber MJ, Sampson NA, Zaslavsky AM, Aguilar-Gaxiola S, Alhamzawi AO, Alonso J, Angermeyer M, Benjet C, Bromet E, Chatterji S, de Girolamo G, Demyttenaere K, Fayyad J, Florescu S, Gal G, Gureje O, Haro JM, Hu C-Y, Karam EG, Kawakami N, Lee S, Lepine J-P, Ormel J, Posada-Villa J, Sagar R, Tsang A, Ustun T, Vassilev S, Viana MC, Williams DR (2010) Childhood adversities and adult psychopathology in the WHO World Mental Health Surveys. Br J Psychiatry 197(5):378–385. doi:10.1192/bjp.bp.110.080499

    Article  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  5. Green JG, McLaughlin KA, Berglund PA, Gruber MJ, Sampson NA, Zaslavsky AM, Kessler RC (2010) Childhood adversities and adult psychiatric disorders in the National Comorbidity Survey Replication I: associations with first onset of DSM-IV disorders. Arch Gen Psychiatry 67(2):113–123. doi:10.1001/archgenpsychiatry.2009.186

    Article  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  6. Centers for Disease Control (2013) Adverse childhood experiences (ACE) Study. http://www.cdc.gov/ace/. Accessed 2 Jan 2014

  7. Centers for Disease Control (2013) Adverse childhood experiences (ACE) Study: Major findings. http://www.cdc.gov/ace/findings.htm. Accessed 2 Jan 2014

  8. Edwards VJ, Holden GW, Felitti VJ, Anda RF (2003) Relationship between multiple forms of childhood maltreatment and adult mental health in community respondents: results from the adverse childhood experiences study. Am J Psychiatry 160(8):1453–1460. doi:10.1176/appi.ajp.160.8.1453

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  9. Chapman DP, Whitfield CL, Felitti VJ, Dube SR, Edwards VJ, Anda RF (2004) Adverse childhood experiences and the risk of depressive disorders in adulthood. J Affect Disord 82(2):217–225

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  10. Anda RF, Whitfield CL, Felitti VJ, Chapman D, Edwards VJ, Dube SR, Williamson DF (2002) Adverse childhood experiences, alcoholic parents, and later risks of alcoholism and depression. Psychiatr Serv 53(8):1001–1009. doi:10.1176/appi.ps.53.8.1001

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  11. Dube SR, Felitti VJ, Dong M, Chapman DP, Giles WH, Anda RF (2003) Childhood abuse, neglect, and household dysfunction and the risk of illicit drug use: the adverse childhood experiences study. Pediatrics 111(3):564–572

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  12. Heim C, Shugart M, Craighead W, Nemeroff CB (2010) Neurobiological and psychiatric consequences of child abuse and neglect. Dev Psychobiol 52(7):671–690. doi:10.1002/dev.20494

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  13. Doom JR, Cicchetti D, Rogosch FA, Dackis MN (2013) Child maltreatment and gender interactions as predictors of differential neuroendocrine profiles. Psychoneuroendocrinology 38(8):1442–1454. doi:10.1016/j.psyneuen.2012.12.019

    Article  CAS  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  14. Grych J, Swan S (2012) Toward a more comprehensive understanding of interpersonal violence: introduction to the special issue on interconnections among different types of violence. Psychol Violence 2(2):105–110. doi:10.1037/a0027616

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Menard C, Bandeen-Roche K, Chilcoat H (2004) Epidemiology of multiple childhood traumatic events: child abuse, parental psychopathology, and other family-level stressors. Soc Psychiatry Psychiatr Epidemiol 39(11):857–865. doi:10.1007/s00127-004-0868-8

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  16. Dunn VJ, Abbott RA, Croudace TJ, Wilkinson P, Jones PB, Herbert J, Goodyer IM (2011) Profiles of family-focused adverse experiences through childhood and early adolescence: the ROOTS project a community investigation of adolescent mental health. BMC Psychiatry 11:109. doi:10.1186/1471-244X-11-109

    Article  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  17. Kessler RC, Davis CG, Kendler KS (1997) Childhood adversity and adult psychiatric disorder in the US National Comorbidity Survey. Psychol Med 27(5):1101–1119

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  18. McLaughlin KA, Green JG, Gruber MJ, Sampson NA, Zaslavsky AM, Kessler RC (2010) Childhood adversities and adult psychiatric disorders in the National Comorbidity Survey Replication II: associations with persistence of DSM-IV disorders. Arch Gen Psychiatry 67(2):124–132. doi:10.1001/archgenpsychiatry.2009.187

    Article  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  19. Keyes KM, Eaton NR, Krueger RF, McLaughlin KA, Wall MM, Grant BF, Hasin DS (2012) Childhood maltreatment and the structure of common psychiatric disorders. Br J Psychiatry 200(2):107–115. doi:10.1192/bjp.bp.111.093062

    Article  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  20. Kessler RC, Berglund P, Demler O, Jin R, Merikangas KR, Walters EE (2005) Lifetime prevalence and age-of-onset distributions of DSM-IV disorders in the National Comorbidity Survey Replication. Arch Gen Psychiatry 62(6):593–602

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  21. Pietrzak RH, Goldstein RB, Southwick SM, Grant BF (2011) Prevalence and axis I comorbidity of full and partial posttraumatic stress disorder in the United States: results from Wave 2 of the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions. J Anxiety Disord 25(3):456–465. doi:10.1016/j.janxdis.2010.11.010

    Article  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  22. Compton WM, Thomas YF, Stinson FS, Grant BF (2007) Prevalence, correlates, disability, and comorbidity of DSM-IV drug abuse and dependence in the United States: results from the national epidemiologic survey on alcohol and related conditions. Arch Gen Psychiatry 64(5):566–576

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  23. Grant BF, Dawson DA (2006) Introduction to the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions. Alcohol Res Health 29(2):74–78

    Google Scholar 

  24. Finkelhor D, Shattuck A, Turner H, Hamby S (2013) Improving the adverse childhood experiences study scale. Jama Pediatr 167(1):70–75. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2013.420

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  25. Dong M, Anda RF, Dube SR, Giles WH, Felitti VJ (2003) The relationship of exposure to childhood sexual abuse to other forms of abuse, neglect, and household dysfunction during childhood. Child Abuse Negl 27(6):625–639. doi:10.1016/S0145-2134(03)00105-4

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  26. Ruan W, Goldstein RB, Chou S, Smith SM, Saha TD, Pickering RP, Dawson DA, Huang B, Stinson FS, Grant BF (2008) The Alcohol Use Disorder and Associated Disabilities Interview Schedule-IV (AUDADIS-IV): reliability of new psychiatric diagnostic modules and risk factors in a general population sample. Drug Alcohol Depend 92(1–3):27–36. doi:10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2007.06.001

    Article  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  27. Bernstein DP, Fink L, Handelsman L, Foote J (1994) Initial reliability and validity of a new retrospective measure of child abuse and neglect. Am J Psychiatry 151(8):1132–1136

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  28. Straus MA (1979) Measuring intrafamily conflict and violence: the Conflict Tactics (CT) Scales. Journal of Marriage & the Family 41(1):75–88

    Article  Google Scholar 

  29. Wyatt GE (1985) The sexual abuse of Afro-American and White-American women in childhood. Child Abuse Negl 9(4):507–519. doi:10.1016/0145-2134(85)90060-2

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  30. The Adverse Childhood Experiences Study (n.d.). http://acestudy.org/ace_score

  31. Grant BF, Dawson DA, Hasin DS (2001) The alcohol use disorder and associated disabilities interview schedule-DSM-IV version. Bethesda

  32. American Psychiatric Association (APA) (1994) Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (DSM-IV). Author, Washington, DC

    Google Scholar 

  33. Hagenaars JA, McCutcheon AL (2002) Applied latent class analysis. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Book  Google Scholar 

  34. Nylund KL, Asparouhov T, Muthén BO (2007) Deciding on the number of classes in latent class analysis and growth mixture modeling: a Monte Carlo simulation study. Struct Equ Model 14(4):535–569. doi:10.1080/10705510701575396

    Article  Google Scholar 

  35. Schwarz G (1978) Estimating the Dimension of a Model. The Annals of Statistics 6(2):461–464

    Article  Google Scholar 

  36. Magidson J, Vermunt JK (2004) Latent class models. In: Kaplan D (ed) The Sage Handbook of Quantitative Methodology for the Social Sciences. Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA., pp 175–197

    Google Scholar 

  37. Lo Y, Mendell NR, Rubin DB (2001) Testing the number of components in a normal mixture. Biometrika 88(3):767–778. doi:10.1093/biomet/88.3.767

    Article  Google Scholar 

  38. Skinner CJ (1989) Domain means, regression and multivariate analysis. In: Skinner J, Holt D, Smith TMF (eds) Analysis of complex surveys. Wiley, New York, pp 59–87

    Google Scholar 

  39. Asparouhov T (2005) Sampling weights in latent variable modeling. Struct Equ Model 12:411–434

    Article  Google Scholar 

  40. Arbuckle JL (1996) Full information estimation in the presence of incomplete data. In: Marcoulides GA, Schumacker RE (eds) Advanced structural equation modeling: Issues and techniques. Erlbaum, Mahwah

    Google Scholar 

  41. Little RJ (1995) Modeling the dropout mechanism in repeated-measures studies. J Am Stat Assoc 90:1112–1121

    Article  Google Scholar 

  42. Muthen B, Shedden K (1999) Finite mixture modeling with mixture outcomes using the EM algorithm. Biometrics 55:463–469

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  43. Schafer JL, Graham JW (2002) Missing data: our view of the state of the art. Psychol Methods 7:147–177

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  44. Kessler RC, Chiu WT, Demler O, Merikangas KR, Walters EE (2005) Prevalence, severity, and comorbidity of 12-month DSM-IV disorders in the National Comorbidity Survey Replication. Arch Gen Psychiatry 62(6):617–627. doi:10.1001/archpsyc.62.6.617

    Article  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  45. Finkelhor D, Shattuck A, Turner HA, Hamby SL (2014) The lifetime prevalence of child sexual abuse and sexual assault assessed in late adolescence. J Adolesc Health. doi:10.1016/j.jadohealth.2013.12.026

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  46. Banyard VL, Williams LM, Siegel JA (2001) The long-term mental health consequences of child sexual abuse: an exploratory study of the impact of multiple traumas in a sample of women. J Trauma Stress 14(4):697–715. doi:10.1023/A:1013085904337

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  47. Eaton NR, Keyes KM, Krueger RF, Balsis S, Skodol AE, Markon KE, Grant BF, Hasin DS (2012) An invariant dimensional liability model of gender differences in mental disorder prevalence: evidence from a national sample. J Abnorm Psychol 121(1):282–288. doi:10.1037/a0024780

    Article  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  48. Hardt J, Rutter M (2004) Validity of adult retrospective reports of adverse childhood experiences: review of the evidence. J Child Psychol Psychiatry 45(2):260–273. doi:10.1111/j.1469-7610.2004.00218.x

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

Silvia Martins work on this study was supported by grant (1RO1HD060072) from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. This study was presented at the 2014 conference for the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies.

Conflict of interest

None.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Rutgers University, 311 North Fifth Street, Camden, NJ, 08102, USA

    Courtenay E. Cavanaugh

  2. American Institute of Research, Washington, DC, USA

    Hanno Petras

  3. School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Hanno Petras

  4. Department of Epidemiology, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    Silvia S. Martins

Authors
  1. Courtenay E. Cavanaugh
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Hanno Petras
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Silvia S. Martins
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Courtenay E. Cavanaugh.

Electronic supplementary material

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Cavanaugh, C.E., Petras, H. & Martins, S.S. Gender-specific profiles of adverse childhood experiences, past year mental and substance use disorders, and their associations among a national sample of adults in the United States. Soc Psychiatry Psychiatr Epidemiol 50, 1257–1266 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00127-015-1024-3

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00127-015-1024-3

Keywords

Search

Navigation