특강 내용:  

Childhood Traumatic Experiences (CTEs) consistently predict a variety of mental health problems in later life. Despite mounting strong evidence about the association between CTEs and mental health symptoms, there is a paucity of empirical knowledge on how different classes of CTEs influence mental health problems among young adults in Singapore. In this study, 1,042 university students answered self-report questionnaires regarding their CTEs and current mental health problems (depressive symptom, anxiety, PTSD, eating disorder and suicidal ideation). CTEs consist of seven indicators of maltreated experiences and bullying victimization in childhood. Latent Class Analysis was used to determine four distinct latent classes of CTEs: Low CTEs, high/multiple CTEs, abuse/victimization, and physical and emotional neglect. The findings that revealed students in the latter three CTEs classes were more likely than those in the Low CTEs class to report most of the mental health problems. The two most common types of CTEs were childhood emotional neglect (CEN; 74.6%) followed by childhood emotional abuse (CEA; 61%). Male students reported higher childhood physical abuse compared to female students; contrarily, female students’ CEA was twice of that of male students. These findings indicate the importance of protecting children from CTEs, and cushioning the adverse effects of CTEs on victims by providing timely intervention and improvements to current programs and practices.