title: Childhood maltreatment in adult offspring of Portuguese war veterans with and without PTSD.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  The colonial war that Portugal was involved in between 1961 and 1974 had a significant impact on veterans and their families. However, it is unclear what the consequences of this war are, in particular with regard to levels of childhood maltreatment (CM) in offspring.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  Our study aims to analyze the influences of fathers' war exposure and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) on the offspring's CM and simultaneously test the hypothesis of the intergenerational transmission of father-child CM.
  
  
  METHODS
  Cross-sectional data were collected, using the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire-Short Form, from 203 adult children and 117 fathers. Subjects were distributed according to three conditions based on the father's war exposure status: did not participate in war, or non-war-exposed (NW); participated in war, or war-exposed (W); and war-exposed with PTSD diagnosis (WP). The data were examined using correlations, variance/covariance, and regression analyses.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Children of war veterans with PTSD reported more emotional and physical neglect, while their fathers reported increased emotional and physical abuse exposure during their own childhood. Significant father-child CM correlations were found in the war veteran group but less in the war veteran with PTSD group. Father CM predicted 16% of offspring CM of children of war veterans.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The father's war-related PTSD might be a risk factor for offspring neglect but potentially a protective one for the father-child abuse transmission. War-exposed fathers without PTSD did transmit their own CM experiences more often. Therefore, father's war exposure and father's war PTSD may each be important variables to take into account in the study of intergenerational transmission of CM.
authors: Faculty of Social Sciences, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands ; Centro de Trauma-Ces, Coimbra, Portugal.
authors: Aida
authors: A
authors: Dias
authors: Centro de Trauma-Ces, Coimbra, Portugal.
authors: Luisa
authors: L
authors: Sales
authors: Medical Psychology Service, Faculty of Medicine, University of Porto, Porto, Portugal.
authors: Rui M
authors: RM
authors: Cardoso
authors: Faculty of Social Sciences, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands ; ArQ Research Foundation, Diemen, The Netherlands.
authors: Rolf
authors: R
authors: Kleber
keywords: Abuse; PTSD; Portugal; intergenerational transmission; neglect; offspring; war