Effects of child maltreatment and inherited liability on antisocial development: an official records study.
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.


METHODS
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) 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, the 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.
Jonson-Reid
Melissa
M
George Warren Brown School of Social Work, Washington University, Saint Louis, MO, USA.
Presnall
Ned
N
Drake
Brett
B
Fox
Louis
L
Bierut
Laura
L
Reich
Wendy
W
Kane
Phyllis
P
Todd
Richard D
RD
Constantino
John N
JN
D000437:Alcoholism / Q000235:genetics; D000987:Antisocial Personality Disorder / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000209:etiology / Q000235:genetics*; D002648:Child; D002649:Child Abuse / Q000523:psychology*; D002652:Child Behavior / Q000523:psychology; D002653:Child Behavior Disorders / Q000235:genetics; D005190:Family; D040941:Heredity; D006801:Humans; D008923:Missouri; D011599:Psychopathology; D012042:Registries; D012307:Risk Factors; D012931:Social Environment; D014427:Twins
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