Childhood abuse neglect and risk for major psychiatric disorders.

Background: Childhood maltreatment (CM) is a strong risk factor for psychiatric disorders but serves in its current definitions as an umbrella for various fundamentally different childhood experiences. As first step toward a more refined analysis of the impact of CM, our objective is to revisit the relation of abuse and neglect, major subtypes of CM, with symptoms across disorders.

Methods: Three longitudinal studies of major depressive disorder (MDD, = 1240), bipolar disorder (BD, = 1339), and schizophrenia (SCZ, = 577), each including controls ( = 881), were analyzed.