Childhood emotional abuse (CEA) and childhood emotional neglect (CEN) are the least well-studied forms of childhood maltreatment due to challenges in their definition and in detection. However, the available evidence suggests associations with multiple adulthood mental health problems in clinical and non-clinical populations. This systematic review and meta-analysis (PROSPERO registration number CRD42020197833) explored the associations between CEA and CEN and a range of adulthood mental health problems based on systematic searches of eight databases. In total, 79 English and 11 Chinese studies met our inclusion criteria. Results suggested that CEA and CEN had positive associations with various adulthood mental health problems ( d = 0.02–1.84), including depression, anxiety, substance abuse, suicidal ideation or attempts, personality disorders, eating disorders, and other psychological symptoms in the general population and across different geographic regions. Furthermore, findings suggested that compared with the non-clinical population, individuals in clinical populations were more likely to have experienced emotional abuse and neglect during childhood. The review highlights the need for more research on emotional abuse and emotional neglect. Furthermore, future research should include more populations from non-western countries and non-college populations. They further underline the importance of addressing issues related to CEA/CEN experiences in the prevention and treatment of mental health issues in adulthood.

The Psychological Maltreatment Review (PMR) is an instrument for retrospectively assessing childhood psychological maltreatment experiences in the dimensions of psychological abuse, psychological neglect, and psychological support; however, it has not yet been validated in Chinese. We recruited 540 Chinese adults and examined: (1) factorial validity and internal consistency, (2) convergent validity, (3) divergent validity, and (4) gender measurement invariance in a Chinese version of the PMR. With minor modifications, model fit for the confirmatory factor model in the overall sample was acceptable and convergent validity was demonstrated. However, model fit for males was poor, which led to the conclusion that gender configural invariance did not hold. Overall, the Chinese version of the PMR appears to produce scores that are valid and reliable for measuring psychological maltreatment in the general population though further work will be required to understand how to measure the concept in a valid and comparable way across genders.

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Excessive screen time among adolescents is discussed as a significant public health concern. Identifying adolescent longitudinal patterns of time spent on regularly-used media screens and understanding their young adulthood mental health and behavioral issue correlates may help inform strategies for improving these outcomes. This study aimed to characterize joint developmental patterns of time spent on videogames, surfing/chatting the Internet, and TV/DVDs during adolescence (at ages 11, 13, 15, 17) and their associations with mental health (i.e., depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, and self-injury) and behavioral issues (i.e., substance use, delinquency, aggression) in early adulthood (at age 20). A parallel-process latent class growth analysis was used to model data from a diverse community-ascertained sample of youth in Zurich, Switzerland (n = 1521; 51.7% males). Results suggested that a five-class model best fitted the data: (1) low-screen use, 37.6%; (2) increasing chatting/surfing, 24.0%; (3) moderate-screen use, 18.6%; (4) early-adolescence screen use, 9.9%; and (5) increasing videogame and chatting/surfing, 9.9%. After adjusting for baseline levels of outcomes (primarily at age 11), the trajectory groups differed in their associations with adulthood outcomes of mental health and behavioral problems, indicating the importance of problematic screen usage patterns in predicting these outcomes. Future research to test the directionality of these associations will be important. These findings suggest which patterns of screen use may be a marker for later mental health and behavioral issues in different domains.