A comparison of psychosis-like symptoms following self-reported and agency-notified child abuse in a population-based birth cohort at 30-year-follow-up

Abstract

There is a strong association between self-reported child abuse and subsequent psychosis in retrospective data. Prospective studies of reports to statutory agencies are less common with limited information on people in their 30s. There have also been no comparisons of the influence of self- and agency-reported abuse on psychosis in adulthood. We therefore compared the prevalence of delusions and hallucinations in 30-year-olds who had experienced either self- or agency-reported childhood maltreatment with that in the remainder of a birth cohort. There were 2427 participants with data on psychosis and child abuse at 30-year follow-up. Information on self-reported abuse came from the Child Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ) and was linked to notifications of child maltreatment reported to statutory agencies. We measured psychotic-like experiences using the Peter's Delusions Inventory (PDI) and screening questions from the Composite International Diagnostic Interview. The prevalence of self- and agency-reported maltreatment was 599 (24.7%) and 141 (5.8%) respectively. At 30-year follow-up, 556 participants had PDI scores in the top two deciles, while 232 had experienced visual hallucinations and 134 auditory phenomena. On adjusted analyses, self-reported maltreatment, apart from sexual abuse, showed a strong association with all three outcomes. Associations were less strong for agency-notified child maltreatment and largely restricted to physical and emotional abuse. These findings suggest that people presenting with psychosis should be screened for child maltreatment, particularly physical and emotional abuse, as well as the possibility of psychosis considered in survivors of child maltreatment.