Childhood maltreatment and personality disorders in adolescents and adults with psychotic or non-psychotic disorders

WenZheng Wang; Yin Cui; Qiang Hu; YanYan Wei; LiHua Xu; XiaoChen Tang; YeGang Hu; HaiChun Liu; ZiXuan Wang; Tao Chen; Ran Wang; CuiXia An; JiJun Wang; TianHong Zhang

doi:10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1336118

Childhood maltreatment and personality disorders in adolescents and adults with psychotic or non-psychotic disorders

Front Psychiatry. 2024 Mar 21:15:1336118. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1336118. eCollection 2024.

Authors

WenZheng Wang^#¹, Yin Cui^#¹, Qiang Hu^#², YanYan Wei¹, LiHua Xu¹, XiaoChen Tang¹, YeGang Hu¹, HaiChun Liu³, ZiXuan Wang⁴, Tao Chen^{5

6}, Ran Wang⁷, CuiXia An^{8

9}, JiJun Wang^{1

10

11}, TianHong Zhang¹

Affiliations

¹ Shanghai Mental Health Center, Shanghai Jiaotong University School of Medicine, Shanghai Engineering Research Center of Intelligent Psychological Evaluation and Intervention, Shanghai Key Laboratory of Psychotic Disorders, Shanghai, China.
² Department of Psychiatry, ZhenJiang Mental Health Center, Zhenjiang, China.
³ Department of Automation, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China.
⁴ Shanghai Xinlianxin Psychological Counseling Center, Shanghai, China.
⁵ Big Data Research Lab, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada.
⁶ Labor and Worklife Program, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, United States.
⁷ Department of Psychiatry, The First Hospital of Hebei Medical University, Shijiazhuang, Hebei, China.
⁸ Hebei Technical Innovation Center, Mental Health Assessment and Intervention, Shijiazhuang, Hebei, China.
⁹ Hebei Clinical Research Center of Mental Disorders, Institute of Mental Health, Shijiazhuang, Hebei, China.
¹⁰ Institute of Psychology and Behavioral Science, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China.
¹¹ Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology (CEBSIT), Chinese Academy of Science, Shanghai, China.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Introduction: While the attention to personality disorders (PD) and childhood maltreatment (CM) has grown in recent years, there remains limited understanding of the prevalence and distinctions of PD and CM in clinical populations of Chinese adolescents in comparison to adults.

Methods: A total of 1,417 participants were consecutively sampled from patients diagnosed with either psychotic or non-psychotic disorders in the psychiatric and psycho-counseling clinics at Shanghai Mental Health Center. The participants were categorized into two groups based on their age: adolescents (aged 15-21 years) and adults (aged 22-35 years). PDs were evaluated using a self-reported personality diagnostic questionnaire and a structured clinical interview, while CMs were assessed using the Chinese version of the Child Trauma Questionnaire Short Form.

Results: When comparing self-reported PD traits and CM between adolescents and adults, differences emerge. Adolescents, particularly in the psychotic disorder group, exhibit more pronounced schizotypal PD traits (p=0.029), and this pattern extends to non-psychotic disorders (p<0.001). Adolescents in the non-psychotic disorder group also report higher levels of emotional abuse (p=0.014), with a notable trend in physical abuse experiences compared to adults (p=0.057). Furthermore, the most prevalent PDs in the clinical sample are avoidant, borderline, and obsessive-compulsive PDs. Among patients with psychotic disorders, adolescents exhibit higher rates of schizoid, schizotypal, and obsessive-compulsive PDs compared to adults. Logistic regression analyses highlight distinct predictors for psychotic and non-psychotic disorders in adolescents and adults.

Discussion: The findings emphasize distinct differences in PDs and CMs between adolescent and adult groups, shedding light on their potential roles in psychotic and non-psychotic disorders.

Keywords: age; childhood abuse; childhood neglect; personality traits; trauma.

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare that financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This study was supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology of China, National Key R&D Program of China (2023YFC2506800), National Natural Science Foundation of China (82171544, 82371505, 82151314, 82101623), and Clinical Research Plan of SHDC (SHDC2022CRD026, SHDC2020CR4066). S&T Program of Hebei (No. SG2021189), The Clinical Research Center at Shanghai Mental Health Center (CRC2018ZD01, CRC2018ZD04).