Understanding the Impact of Child and Adolescent Polyvictimization on Young Adult Depressive Symptoms

Background and Purpose:

Approximately 80% of youth will experience at least one incident of victimization during childhood, which puts them at further risk for multiple victimizations. Polyvictimization describes individuals who experience victimization with greater frequency and across multiple domains. Polyvictimization is related to a child’s well-being and may lead to worsening health and behavioral health outcomes over the life course. Little research has explored the accumulated impact of polyvictimization on young adult outcomes. This study addresses a gap in the literature by exploring the relationship between childhood polyvictimization and young adult depressive symptoms.

Methods:

A secondary data analysis was conducted of the Add Health data set and included a total sample of 13,816 youth. Four waves of data were used to create a polyvictimization index modeled after Finkelhor et al.’s Juvenile Victimization Questionnaire, which aggregates victimization experiences into 5 domains (Conventional Crime, Maltreatment, Sexual Victimization, Peer/Sibling Victimization, Witnessing Victimization). Nine items drawn from the CES-D were used to measure young adult depressive symptoms at Wave III. A multinomial logistic regression was used to explore the predicted probabilities of reporting increasing severity levels of depressive symptoms depending on the number of polyvictimization domains reported. Analyses were adjusted for the cluster-based sampling design and sampling weights were applied to provide nationally representative estimates.

Results

Over 69% of the sample reported one incident of childhood victimization. A small portion of the sample experienced three (10.76%), four (4.86%), or five (1.01%) polyvictimization domains, whereas a moderate number experienced two (20.24%) domains of victimization. The number of polyvictimization domains reported was significantly associated with being in the low, medium, and high levels of depressive symptom category (p<.000) when controlling for all covariates. Individuals reporting all five domains were 6.5 times more likely to be in the high depressive symptom group than the minimal symptom group (RR=6.54, p<.001). Individual and environmental characteristics were also significantly related to being in the high symptom category including race, gender, and family structure.

Conclusions & Implications

Results indicate experiencing multiple victimization domains during childhood predicted reporting more severe depressive symptoms in young adulthood. This suggests it is not only victimization frequency, but also exposure to multiple “types” of victimization, which may lead to worsening outcomes. Study findings highlight the importance of screening social work clients for trauma exposure across multiple domains to target prevention and intervention strategies, which may reduce the negative impact of victimization and improve long term well-being.