The Link of Childhood Abuse and Personality Pathology

Abstract

Along with the advanced development of current society, personality disorders have attracted more attention. They can drive people to more stressful and unhealthy states. To develop corresponding treatments, studying the etiology of personality disorders is crucial. One proposed contributor is childhood maltreatment, which is pervasive and often result in severe damages to the victims. The childhood maltreatment basically can be divided into five types: physical abuse, mental abuse, sexual abuse, physical neglect, and mental neglect. Different types of maltreatment, the co-existence, and the severity may contribute to various degrees of personality disorders. Childhood maltreatment may not cause disorders directly but may be a mediator in this relationship instead. Common mediators in this link can be gender difference, relevant personality traits, and deviated attitudes toward self, such as consistent self-criticism. The existence of diversified mediators suggests that the relationship between child abuse and personality pathology can be a complex one. One of the limitations in the previous studies is that the methodology of most experiments is self-report. Although self-report can effectively reflect one’s personal experience, the subjectivity of self-report can lead to possible biases in the findings. Another limitation is that the sample size is not large and abundant enough. Plus, there is also a lack of tracking victims’ life experiences after the abuse, to understand how abuse can impact their daily lives. To address this limitation, future research should adopt longitudinal experimental designs. This review can provide some insights and clinical emphasis to the family intervention studies and practices for those children that are at risk of child abuse.