Research That Matters (January 17 - 20, 2008)

Purpose: A large number of children suffer from childhood maltreatment and its damaging effects on emotional and behavioral health in adolescence. Although many studies have shown a relationship between childhood maltreatment and the risk of alcohol abuse and binge drinking in adulthood, few studies have examined this relationship within an adolescent population. In addition, although clinicians have long been aware of the co-occurrence of different types of maltreatment on an individual, researchers have rarely examined the joint effect of the co-occurrence of multiple categories of maltreatment on youth alcohol problems. This study examined the effects of multiple types of maltreatment on youth alcohol use and binge drinking by using the following system of maltreatment classification: no abuse, neglect-only, physical abuse-only, sexual abuse-only, neglect and physical abuse, neglect and sexual abuse, physical and sexual abuse, and all three types of abuse.

Method: The current study used the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) to examine the associations between multiple types of maltreatment and youth alcohol use (consumed alcohol 2 or more days a month) and binge drinking (consumed five or more drinks in a row at least once in the past year). The Add Health is a national longitudinal study (three waves of data collection) that explored the causes of health-related behaviors of adolescents in grades 7 through 12 and their outcomes in young adulthood. The study sample included participants in the Wave I and Wave III in-home surveys (n=14,047).

Results: As expected, logistic regression analyses controlling for gender, age, race, family income, and parental supervision found that childhood maltratment significantly predicted both youth alcohol use and binge drinking (odd ratio = 1.97, p < .0001 and odd ratio = 1.67, p < .001, respectively). Examining the relationship between multiple types of maltreament and youth alcohol problems, we found that all maltreatment types or combinations of types excludying physical abuse-only (odd ratio = 1.20, p = .13) were significantly associated with youth alcohol use, and binge drinking. Statistical comparisons of the magnitude effects of different types of maltreatment on youth alcohol abuse found that the effects of the combination of physical abuse and sexual abuse were greater than the effects of single-type-maltreatment-only on youth alcohol problems.

Implication: This study revealed that all types of maltreatment, including physical abuse, sexual abuse, and neglect should be considered risk factors for youth alcohol problems. It also found that youth with physical and sexual abuse are at the highest risk of alcohol use in adolescence. This suggests that both preventive and treatment interventions of youth alcohol problems should address the negative combined effects of child maltreatment on alcohol use, and that future research should consider to examining the joint effect of the co-occurrence of multiple categories of maltreatment on other developmental outcomes.