Experience of childhood adversity and maladaptive personality traits: Magnitude and specificity of the association in a clinical sample of adult outpatients

The relationship between the experience of childhood adversity (CA) and the development of personality disorders (PDs) has been well documented. The dimensional PD alternative model (AMPD) has been introduced in nosography in 2013, and so far it is been used for CA research mostly on non-clinical samples. We included in our study 137 psychiatric outpatients who were screened for history of maternal antipathy (MA), paternal antipathy (PA), maternal neglect (MN), paternal neglect (PN), maternal physical abuse (MPA), paternal physical abuse (PPA) and sexual abuse (SA) using the Childhood Experience of Care and Abuse Questionnaire (CECA.Q) and underwent personality assessment using the Personality Inventory for DSM-5. Applying CECA.Q cut-off scores, rates of participants reporting CA were as follows: 14.6% MA; 13.9% PA; 13.1% MN; 10.2% PN; 25.5% MPA; 24.8% PPA; and 22.6% SA. In multivariate regression models, accounting for age, gender and exposure to other types of CA, exposure to MA was associated with increased negative affect, detachment, disinhibition and psychoticism; exposure to PA with increased disinhibition; and exposure to SA with increased antagonism, disinhibition and psychoticism. All effect sizes were small, except for a moderate effect of SA on psychoticism. Results pointed to a small but specific and independent effect of MA on most maladaptive personality traits; a possible specific role of the paternal figure for externalizing traits; and a moderate effect of SA on psychoticism. The cumulative exposure to multiple CAs significantly predicted all maladaptive personality traits, with much larger effect sizes compared to those calculated for single CAs. CA explained the higher proportion of variance for antagonism and psychoticism. In conclusion, exposure to specific forms of childhood abuse was associated with specific maladaptive traits in psychiatric outpatients, even if the effect of cumulative multiple CAs was larger.