The Effects of Child Maltreatment and Inherited Liability on Antisocial Development: An Official Records Study
Date
2010
Journal Title
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Publisher
Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
Abstract
Objective: Evidence is steadily accumulating that a preventable environmental hazard, child maltreatment, exerts causal influences on the development of long-standing patterns of antisocial behavior in humans. The relationship between child maltreatment and antisocial outcome, however, has never previously been tested in a large-scale study in which official-reports (rather than family-member reports) of child abuse and neglect were incorporated, and genetic influences comprehensively controlled for. Method: We cross-referenced official-report data on child maltreatment from the Missouri Division of Social Services (DSS) with behavioral data from 4,432 epidemiologically-ascertained Missouri twins from the Missouri Twin Registry (MOTWIN). We performed a similar procedure for a clinically-ascertained sample of singleton children ascertained from families affected by alcohol dependence participating in the Collaborative Study on the Genetics of Alcoholism (COGA, n=428) in order to determine whether associations observed in the general population held true in an “enriched” sample at combined inherited and environmental risk for antisocial development. Results: For both the twin and clinical samples, additive effects (not interactive effects) of maltreatment and inherited liability on antisocial development were confirmed, and were highly statistically significant. Conclusions: Child maltreatment exhibited causal influence on antisocial outcome when controlling for inherited liability in both the general population and in a clinically-ascertained sample. Official-report maltreatment data represents a critical resource for resolving competing hypotheses on genetic and environmental causation of child psychopathology, and for assessing intervention outcomes in efforts to prevent antisocial development. (Author Abstract)
Description
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Article
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Keywords
child abuse, research, conduct disorder, genetics, externalizing behavior
Citation
Jonson-Reid, M., Presnall, N., Drake, B., Fox, L., Bierut, L., Reich, W., ... & Constantino, J. N. (2010). Effects of child maltreatment and inherited liability on antisocial development: an official records study. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 49(4), 321-332.