Objective and subjective experiences of child maltreatment and their relationships with psychopathology

“…perceptions of child adversity matter most for emotional outcomes, with evidence that the development of emotional disorders do not signi fi cantly differ among those who did not report ACEs despite being identi fi ed as having experienced childhood adversity in legal cases (Danese & Widom, 2020).”

“…consistent with work on more conventionally studied forms of adversity (e.g., abuse, neglect), which suggests that the subjective experience of adversity might be a more potent predictor of child psychopathology than the objective occurrence (Baldwin and Degli Esposti 2021; Danese and Widom 2020).”

“48 Finally, although the majority of adolescents in the current sample were White, this is representative of the area in which the data were collected.”

“Based on the previous findings among adolescents and offenders [22, 36], we expected that there would be significant differences between maltreatment profiles and outcome variables.”

“Research suggests the association with psychopathology is primarily driven by retrospective subjective reports rather than official records (i.e., objective reports) of trauma (Danese & Widom, 2020).”

“Prior studies (including those with documented child maltreatment) have shown that adult retrospective recalls are poor and biased by their later experiences and mental health (Baldwin et al., 2019; Danese & Widom, 2020; Schraedley et al., 2002; White et al., 2007).”

“Existing evidence is mainly based on recalls of objective and/or subjective traumatic experiences over a fraction of one’s life history (Maschi et al., 2011; Boals, 2018; Danese and Widom, 2020), but less so following instant measures of civil unrest as an acute traumatic exposure.”

“First, the retrospective self-report CM measure may be subject to biases [91 – 93].”

“Although retrospective ACE reports are highly predictive of various psychosocial outcomes (Danese & Widom, 2020), they also carry the risk of common method bias.”

“…are in line with literature that shows that subjective experiences (i.e., child-reported parental support at W3) are stronger predictors of developmental outcomes compared to other-reported measures of these experiences (e.g., Danese & Widom, 2020; Shields et al., 2023; Solomon et al., 1987).”

“), sometimes even more strongly so than their objective experiences (Danese & Widom, 2020).”

“More recent evidence also revealed low agreement between prospective and retrospective CT reports (Baldwin, Reuben, Newbury, & Danese, 2019; Danese & Widom, 2020).”

“Emerging findings suggest that these subjective perceptions of adversity are better predictors of (later) mental health outcomes than objective reports of trauma (Danese & Lewis, 2022; Danese & Widom, 2020).”

“Converging evidence suggests that it is the subjec - tive experience of stress, rather than objective exposure to stress, that is most strongly related to psychopathology across the lifespan (Danese & Widom, 2020, 2021; Walker et al., 2004).”

“Previous research demonstrates that parental abuse and neglect directly and profoundly affect mental health, especially in the development stages of childhood and adolescence (Danese & Widom, 2020).”

“…promoting adaptative problems on various domains like academic functioning (Fisher & Widom, 2021), psychosocial functioning (Alink et al., 2012), mental health (Cohen et al., 2019; Danese & Widom, 2020; Humphreys et al., 2020; VanMeter et al., 2021) or aggressive behavior (Augusti et al., 2018).”

“25 It is relevant therefore that Benjamin ’ s and Starobinski ’ s commentaries shed light on the relations between Baudelaire ’ s subjective poetic images and their social-historical context.”

“EMR are not intended to capture information about patient perceptions, and yet we know that the subjective experiences and outcomes of one person to the next are variable and also predictive of future health.[10, 11].”

“Retrospective responses of HRS participants to identify the three factors for assessing early life experiences were used based upon a recent study indicating that subjective measures of childhood maltreatment can predict psychopathological risk (32).”

“However, retrospective reports highlight the informant ’ s perception of childhood messages, which still provide valuable insights as perceived experiences can be just as important as objective ones (Danese & Widom, 2020).”

“…including maltreatment, social hierarchy, loneliness, and pain, appear to be highly predictive of outcomes, such as well-being and mental health, and often more so than objective classifications ( Bzdok and Dunbar, 2022 ; Danese and Widom, 2020 ; Rivenbark et al., 2020 ; Wager and Atlas, 2015 ).”

“…maltreatment, including potential altered stress regulatory functions [14,15], poorer physical health [15 – 18], increased psychopathology [16,19 – 22], reduced socioeconomic status, and worse behavioral and social outcomes [23,24], may serve to explain the relationship between childhood…”

“Therefore, better documenting the perceptions of adults would allow for better subjective operationalizations of emotional abuse, along with an opportunity to better explain differential outcomes over time across a wider range of participants (Danese, 2020; Danese & Widom, 2020).”

“…that emotionally abusive behaviors are still objectively abusive across time and that the subjective recall of experiences of maltreatment are still valuable and provide different insights than more objective measures when considering various victim outcomes (Danese, 2020; Danese & Widom, 2020).”

“However, self-reported CT experiences seem to be more relevant clinically; with the risk of psychopathology being related to retrospective self-reports of CT and the person’s subjective emotional experience, rather than to the documented experience itself [68, 69].”

“Acknowledgingsocialdesirabil-itybiasesinparent-reportedparenting(Bornsteinetal.,2015)andtheimportanceofsubjectiveexperience(Schaefer, 1965),forsometime,thetraditionalparentingliteraturehasrecognisedtheneedforchild-reportparentingmeasures (Danese & Widom, 2020; Scott et al., 2011).”

“However, it has been shown that psychopathology is associated more with subjective than objective recall of traumatic events (94).”

“However, other studies indicate that individuals’ emotional and physiological response to adversity is additionally important for predicting psychosocial outcomes (Danese & Widom, 2020).”

“Exposure to abuse, family violence, sexual trauma, or family member alcoholism in childhood is linked with unfavorable physical and social outcomes in adulthood (Danese & Widom, 2020).”

“…key risk factor for lifecourse psychopathology rather than the objective side, also in case of ascertained maltreatment based on court records (Danese and Widom, 2020): i.e., only the subjective recall of child maltreatment is longitudinally associated with psychopathological consequences in…”

“Indeed, cognitive theories (Ehlers & Clark, 2000) and recent fi ndings (Danese & Widom, 2020) highlight a subjective “ sense of threat ” as core to trauma.”

“This facilitates the inclusion of broader populations in studies (Danese & Widom, 2020; Georgieva, Tomás, Navarro-Pérez, & Samper-García, 2023).”

“These two approaches identify largely non-overlapping groups and constructs, raising concerns about comparability and generalizability (Baldwin et al., 2019; Danese & Widom, 2020, 2023).”

“The role of subjective appraisal of trauma memories has been demonstrated as a key determinant of trauma-related psychopathology (Baldwin, Coleman, Francis, & Danese, 2024; Coleman et al., 2024; Danese & Widom, 2020).”

“Studies suggest that coping attitudes can be greatly influenced by a history of childhood neglect and abuse, and these attitudes may affect the development of psychopathology (35-41).”

“…such as maltreatment, as opposed to objective measures (e.g., court documentation), may actually be more strongly associated with psychopathology even after adjusting for recall bias although it is important to note that shared method bias may play a role in this association (Danese & Widom, 2020).”

“However, it is important to note that retrospective reports of experiences of childhood adversity have unique associations with health that do not always parallel concurrent reports (Danese & Widom, 2020).”

“ORCID iDs Patrícia P Silveira https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8626-2519 Andre K. Portella https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3390-0016 João Paulo M Hoppe https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8181-8837”

“…psychopathology, objective records of childhood maltreatment are only weakly predictive of psychopathology once subjective assessment of such events, measured using self-reports, are considered, with the latter strongly predicting both current and future psychopathology (Danese and Widom, 2020).”

“…is thought that the recollection of early life adversity matters most, with evidence that emotional functioning does not significantly differ between those who reported ACEs versus those who did not despite having experienced childhood adversity, as identified in legal cases (Danese & Widom, 2020).”

“Nevertheless, there is evidence that the subjective experience of adversity (e.g., as measured by self-report) rather than the pure objective exposure to it (e.g., official records) confers an increased health risk 83 .”

“However, difficulties in adaptative functioning, as in psychopathology, are strongly related to subjective reports of maltreatment and have a weak association with prospective reports that are not confirmed by subjective reports (Danese and Widom, 2020).”

“However, it is pertinent to note that self-reported accounts of CM are considered valid in the absence of objective evidence, as they represent an individual ’ s perception of early-life adversity [46].”

“subjective reports is associated with minimal psychopathology (2).”

“However, subjective reports of trauma are more closely related to psychopathological outcomes than objective measures of trauma, 66 but more evidence is needed to understand if the same pattern occurs with non-mental medical disease.”

“…shown that retrospective and prospective measurements of vic-timisation identify partly different populations (Bald-win, Reuben, Newbury, & Danese, 2019) and that self-reported exposures might have stronger associations with psychiatric disorders than objective assessments (Danese & Widom, 2020).”

“Building on the retrospective and prospective distinction, scholars have further differentiated between objective and subjective experiences of childhood maltreatment (Danese & Widom, 2020, 2023, 2024).”

“…despite the inherent limitations of retrospective self-report measures, previous research indicates that such assessments often underestimate-rather than exaggerate-the strength of associations between adversities and negative health outcomes, including alterations in brain structure [54-56].”

“31 Therefore, the association between polyvic-timization and prolonged PTSD symptoms found in this study is reliable.”

“In contrast, the risk of psychopathology in objective measures was minimal in the absence of subjective reports (Danese & Widom, 2020).”

“For example, studies have documented poor agreement between prospectively and retrospectively assessed maltreatment, as well as discordance in their association with mental health (Baldwin et al., 2023; Danese and Widom, 2020).”

“We opt for subjective measures of social environment quality , since recent work suggests they may have stronger associations with neural data [17, 21].”

“However, there are interesting findings to suggest that individuals' subjective perceptions may be more determinative of the development of psychopathology than objective maltreatment per se (Danese & Widom, 2020).”

“For instance, self-reported measures of childhood maltreatment are associated with a higher risk of psychopathology, whereas official court records are weakly so if not confirmed by subjective appraisal [54].”

“Furthermore, retrospective reports of CA may be susceptible to recall bias (Maughan & Rutter, 1997), although subjective reports, rather than objective measures, of CA are associated with psychopathology in early adulthood (Danese & Widom, 2020).”

“…work indicating that the processing of a stressful event, rather than its objective severity, can be a stronger predictor of long-term outcomes 38 , our findings support the premise that language is a rich behavioral phenotype that effectively captures latent psychological processes, such as…”

“Retrospective self-reports also show stronger associations with psychopathology than prospective measures, regardless of whether they are corroborated by prospective evidence 4,5 .”

“Such associations suggest that reports of emotional trauma may be influenced not only by past experiences but also by present affective conditions (Danese & Widom, 2020).”

“Relatedly, the reliance on retrospective self-reported data for childhood maltreatment introduces potential recall bias, and while subjective experiences of adversity may better predict psychopathology [87,88], future research should examine the discrepancies with objective reports.”

“Children's experience of traumatic events is affected by subjective appraisals (Danese and Widom 2020) and developmental factors (Pynoos et al. 1999).”

“These projects are generating novel insights by capturing variation in behavioral, health, and biological outcomes that vary by children’s perceptions of their life circumstances (Danese & Widom 2020, Rivenbark et al. 2020, Smith & Pollak 2022).”

“…in adulthood, usually through self-report) (Baldwin, Reuben, Newbury, & Danese, 2019), and retrospective measures are more strongly associated with psychopathology than prospective ones (Baldwin, Coleman, Francis, & Danese, 2024; Danese & Widom, 2020; Newbury et al., 2018; Reuben et al., 2016).”

“Defining what constitutes a traumatic event is subject to debate (Weathers & Keane, 2007), and it is increasingly recognised that events which do not meet Criterion-A can result in PTSD symptoms (Brewin et al., 2019; Danese & Widom, 2020).”

“Health surveys may further encourage disclosure by adopting a context that emphasizes well-being and introspection, prompting respondents to recall a broader range of problematic experiences, some of which meet the definition of CA (Daigle et al., 2016 ; Danese & Widom, 2020; Reuben et al., 2016 ).”

“Moreover, given that the type of measurement can influence the association between childhood maltreatment and psychopathology (Danese & Widom, 2020), future research should consider using multiple assessment methods to validate these findings.”

“…that the degree of case-by-case variability in our sample was high because we assessed both ACEs and adult outcomes retrospectively and cross-sectionally, an approach that actually maximizes the observed association between the two (Baldwin et al., 2024; Danese & Widom, 2020; Widom et al., 1999).”