Childhood Physical and Sexual Abuse and Posttraumatic Stress Disorders in Latino Americans Nationwide

Background and Purpose:

Childhood abuse is a major social and health concern. Studies reported that childhood abuse has been associated with mental health issues, such as posttraumatic stress disorders (PTSD; Brewin et al., 2000).  Despite the significance of impacts of childhood abuse on PTSD, little is known about the prevalence of childhood physical and sexual abuse and its association with PTSD among Latino Americans, the fastest growing ethnic minority population in the U.S.  This study aimed to investigate the association between childhood physical and sexual abuse and PTSD among Latino Americans after controlling for socio-demographic, acculturation, and discrimination factors.  

Methods:

We utilized data on all Latino Americans (N=2,554) from the National Latino and Asian American Study (NLAAS), which is the first nationally-representative survey on the mental health of Latino Americans aged 18 years or older who resided in the U.S.  Our sample included 49.3% females and 42.1% U.S born.  The average age in years of participants was 38.05 (SD=15.07, range 18-97).  To test our hypotheses, two outcomes (PTSD-lifetime and PTSD-past year), childhood abuse predictors, and control variables were measured.  Sample weights were used to provide measures that were representative of the U.S. Latino population.  Two-step logistic regression models were performed to estimate the association between childhood physical and sexual abuse and the two outcomes.  Chi-squares differences were also conducted to test whether the power of Model-2 is higher than that of Model-1.  

Results:

Findings indicated reported 31.3% of Latino Americans experienced physical abuse and 11.6% had sexual abuse in childhood.  Also, 4.5% reported PTSD-lifetime and 2.5% had PTSD-past year.  In Model-1, gender, US-born, US-length, acculturation stress, and discrimination were significant predictors on both PTSD-lifetime and PTSD-past year.  However, while English proficiency was positively related to PTSD-lifetime, employment was negatively related to PTSD-past year. When adding childhood abuse in Model-2, Latinos who had experienced childhood physical abuse and sexual abuse were approximately 3.4times (CI=2.03, 5.69, p<.001) and 2.3times (CI=1.34, 3.86, p<.01) more likely to have PTSD-lifetime and 3.7times (CI=1.85, 7.16, p<.001) and 2.7time (CI=1.38, 5.15, p<.01) more likely to have PTSD-past year, respectively.  The new set of predictors led to a significantly better model fit in both Models-2 of PTSD-lifetime (x²change=38.85; df=2; p<.001) and PTSD-past year (x²change=83.28; df=2; p<.001).  Finally, females had significantly higher levels of PTSD-lifetime when experiencing physical abuse compared with men, whereas there was no gender difference with sexual abuse.

Conclusions and Implications:

This study contributes to the useful information regarding the association between childhood abuse and PTSD among Latino Americans and its application in social work research and practice.  It is important to investigate the influence of childhood physical and sexual abuse to decrease the likelihood of PTSD for Latino Americans.  This knowledge can be used by social work practitioners in developing and implementing various prevention and intervention programs to reduce PTSD as well as to improve Latinos’ well-being. Additionally, this study implies that the current society is needed to shift the perspectives against racial and ethnic discrimination for better cultural competence.