Association of Childhood Neglect with Adult Dissociation in Schizophrenic Inpatients

Abstract

Background: Dissociation is often related to previous trauma and also occurs frequently in schizophrenia. Dissociation and psychosis may reflect a posttraumatic syndrome in some patients with schizophrenia. Sampling and Methods: In total, 80 patients diagnosed with schizophrenia were investigated by means of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ), the Dissociative Experience Scale and the Symptom Check List 90-R. CTQ subscales and groups reporting high and low dissociation were compared using MANOVA. Results: Childhood traumatic experiences were frequent [mean CTQ total score = 45.4 ± 17.5 (SD)]. Physical neglect was clearly associated with high dissociation, whereas abuse was not. Furthermore, there was a significant association of physical neglect with psychopathological distress not fully accounted for by dissociation. Conclusions: Dissociation may be specifically linked to childhood physical neglect in patients diagnosed with schizophrenia. Dissociation alone may not explain the effects of childhood maltreatment on adult psychopathology in schizophrenia; however, conclusions from the present study are limited due to its cross-sectional design.

Childhood maltreatment in subjects with male-to-female gender identity disorder

“…This is not surprising, as a growing amount of data report the association between CM and adult dissociative psychopathology. 16,[44][45][46][47][48][49] It has been suggested that the development of dissociation, reflecting severe deficits in the integration of the self, can be an outcome of CM, 50 and severity and chronicity of maltreatment have been found to predict future levels of dissociation. 51 In particular, a meta-analysis, evaluating 26 studies with 2108 subjects involved, reports a positive association between CM and dissociation regardless of the type of abuse.…”

Trauma, Dissociation and Synthetic Metacognition in Schizophrenia

“…Vogel et al (2006) found that even patients without a history of trauma or posttraumatic symptoms can elevate a level of dissociation on the DES scale and in a later study (Vogel et al, 2009b) it has been showed that dissociation has a more proximal impact on schizophrenia symptoms then trauma history. Moreover, a worse capability to discriminate negative emotion in schizophrenia and schizoafective patients is probably associated with amnestic dissociation and therefore with functional deficit in these disorders (Renard et al, 2012).…”

“…Moreover, a worse capability to discriminate negative emotion in schizophrenia and schizoafective patients is probably associated with amnestic dissociation and therefore with functional deficit in these disorders (Renard et al, 2012). All these recent findings show that dissociation is not only related to previous trauma history and that it may contribute to characteristic feature of schizophrenia, perhaps as a psychological mechanism of defense for mitigation of strong disorganizing affects or inner conflicts (Giese et al, 1997;Vogel et al, 2009b). But it seems that dissociation doesn't serve effectively in this way in psychoses.…”

“…Dissociation is in general linked to positive symptoms of schizophrenia (Spitzer et al, 1997), but dissociative amnesia is related to negative symptoms (Vogel et al, 2009a). In respect to a type of trauma, dissociation has been found related to emotional and physical abuse (Schafer et al, 2012), physical abuse and neglect (Sar et al, 2010), and childhood neglect (Vogel et al, 2009b). Dissociation is probably state related and diminishes in a course of treatment of acute in-patients (Schafer et al, 2012).…”

Childhood Neglect: Exploring a Short Questionnaire in Poland and Germany

“…However, their study used the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ) [13], which is known to have a limited ability to discriminate between abuse and neglect (see below). Using the same indicator, Vogel et al [14] found that physical neglect predicted dissociation in schizophrenics, while abuse did not. Moreover, Claussen and Crittenden [15] in 1991 found in their study that psychological maltreatment was more predictive of a child's developmental impairment than the severity of physical abuse.…”