Childhood abuse history and early adulthood health

Citation

Huang, Ying & Zhang, Weihui (2016). Childhood abuse history and early adulthood health. 2016 Add Health Users Conference. Bethesda, MD.

Abstract

We are planning to assess the associations between childhood physical and sexual abuse experience and early adulthood health. We also want to examine the extent to which persistent depression and contemporaneous socioeconomic status would mediate this association. We have three hypotheses: 1) the frequency of childhood abuse experience is likely to be related to the severity of the health problems; 2) persistent depression mediates the later life health effect of childhood abuse; 3) individuals’ current SES may partially explain the association between childhood abuse and poor health outcomes. We intend to use the publically available Add Health data from Waves I through IV. The outcome variable is self-rated health (SRH). Independent variables include respondent’s experiences of physical and sexual abuse. For mediation analyses, we will use persistent depression and adult’s current SES, which should be captured by a set of three indicators: the highest educational attainment, material hardship, and total taxable income in the previous year. Multivariate logistic models is determined to assess the relationship between childhood abuse experience and self-rated health, separately for sexual and physical abuse; then we will add the potential mediation variables into the base models separately. We expect to find support for the hypothesis that childhood abuse elevates risks of being in poor health through the mediation mechanism of persistent depression and adult SES.

URL

https://addhealth.cpc.unc.edu/wp-content/uploads/docs/events/2016%20Add%20Health%20Users%20Conference%20Abstracts_2016_06_16.pdf

Reference Type

Conference proceeding

Book Title

2016 Add Health Users Conference

Author(s)

Huang, Ying
Zhang, Weihui

Year Published

2016

City of Publication

Bethesda, MD

Reference ID

6347