Childhood maltreatment’s far reaching effects on young women: New study from BU School of Social Work links maltreatment to risk behaviors

“Child maltreatment is a complex and serious public health issue,” says Hyeouk Chris Hahm, PhD, assistant professor at Boston University School of Social Work. “Child maltreatment is associated with the development of various symptoms of psychopathology and health problems.” In a recent study published in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence, Hahm and her colleagues from Brandeis University and BU School of Public Health attempted to clarify the ways in which different types of child maltreatment impact a wide range of risk behaviors among women: sexual risk behaviors, delinquency, and suicidality. While studies have connected various types of maltreatment to sexual risk behaviors, to delinquency, and to suicidality, Hahm explains far less attention has been focused on comprehensively linking these types of maltreatment with a variety of subsequent risk behaviors among young women.

This female focus comes at a critical public health and social welfare moment. Women are the fastest growing demographic of HIV/AIDS infections, and the fastest growing subgroup of offenders in the juvenile justice system in the United States. Women made up only seven percent of new HIV/AIDS cases in the US in 1986, but they accounted for over 25 percent of all new diagnoses two decades later. “During the same period,” Hahm adds, “the total number of juveniles arrested in the US decreased by 700,000 while the rate of female arrests increased from 25 to 29 percent of total arrests.” Hahm explains she included suicide attempts and suicidal ideation in the study because women, compared to men, have a substantially higher prevalence of suicide attempts, including self-inflicted injuries, despite the fact that men have a higher prevalence of completed suicides. Moreover, she says, “each self-inflicted injury results in enormous societal costs…to say nothing of the cost involved in human suffering.”

Hahm thus felt that it was a critical public health issue to identify the predictive factors associated with sexual, delinquent, and suicidal behaviors among women, and that given the extent of these alarming problems affecting women in multiple risk behaviors, a study was needed to examine ways in which child maltreatment impacts a wide range of outcomes.

Hahm’s study demonstrated that child maltreatment is a very common form of violence perpetrated by caregivers, and additionally, that child maltreatment has sustainable negative effects on a wide range of developmental outcomes for women transitioning from adolescence to young adulthood. The study demonstrated, explains Hahm, “that experiencing multiple forms of child maltreatment is a significant and serious health problem because multiple forms of child maltreatment seem to be clearly and specifically linked to detrimental developmental sequelae.”

“Understanding the details of women’s child maltreatment histories is an important first step for effective treatment of individuals with trauma,” says Hahm. “When clinicians asses histories, they should be cognizant of the need to determine a more specific maltreatment history: the specific types of maltreatment, whether or not multiple types were experienced, and whether or not sexual abuse co-occured with other types of maltreatment.”

Hahm emphasizes that clinicians should also assess a wide variety of client behavioral outcomes in order to have a more comprehensive understanding of the impact of child maltreatment on those outcomes…this information may help clinicians educate young women about developing appropriate coping strategies to replace risky behaviors associated with he trauma of childhood maltreatment.”

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