The Impact of Childhood Emotional Abuse: An Extension of the Child Abuse and Trauma Scale

Abstract

Objective: There are few well-validated measures of childhood emotional abuse. This study explored the potential of the Child Abuse and Trauma Scale CATS; ( Sanders and Becker-Lausen 1995) to yield such a measure. The CATS was originally devised to measure the extent of adverse sexual, physical and neglectful experiences, but contains items that also reflect the construct of emotional abuse. Method: A sample of 236 nonclinical women completed the CATS and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression scale. A fourth subscale was drawn from the existing CATS items, reflecting reported emotional abuse during childhood. Results: The concurrent validity and internal consistency of this new subscale were tested, and were found to be at an acceptable level. Indeed, there was some indication that the new childhood emotional abuse subscale played a more central role in anxiety and depression than did the original three subscales. Conclusions: It is recommended that this revised version of the CATS should be used in future research and clinical practice, in order that the multidimensional nature of abuse can be better understood.