Volume 49, Issue 4 , Pages 321-332, April 2010
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.
Method
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.
Key Words: conduct disorder, genetics, child abuse, administrative data, externalizing behavior
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Dr. Johnson-Reid and Dr. Constantino contributed equally to this work.
This article is discussed in an editorial by Dr. Joan Kaufman on page 300.
This article can be used to obtain continuing medical education (CME) category 1 credit at jaacap.org.
This work was supported in part by The Collaborative Study on the Genetics of Alcoholism (COGA). Principal Investigators are B. Porjesz, vs. Hesselbrock, H. Edenberg, L. Bierut. The study includes nine different centers: University of Connecticut (V. Hesselbrock); Indiana University (H.J. Edenberg, J. Nurnberger Jr., T. Foroud); University of Iowa (S. Kuperman, J. Kramer); SUNY Downstate (B. Porjesz); Washington University in St. Louis (L. Bierut, A. Goate, J. Rice, K. Bucholz); University of California at San Diego (M. Schuckit); Rutgers University (J. Tischfield); Southwest Foundation (L. Almasy), and Virginia Commonwealth University (D. Dick). A. Parsian and M. Reilly are the NIAAA Staff Collaborators and Robert Taylor serves as a consultant. This national collaborative study is supported by National Institutes of Health Grant U10AA008401 from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA).
We continue to be inspired by our memories of Henri Begleiter and Theodore Reich, founding PI and Co-PI of COGA, and also owe a debt of gratitude to other past organizers of COGA, including Ting-Kai Li, P. Michael Conneally, Raymond Crowe, and Wendy Reich, for their critical contributions.
Disclosure: Drs. Jonson-Reid, Drake, Fox, Beirut, Reich, Todd, and Constantino, and Mr. Presnall and Mrs. Kane report no biomedical financial interests or potential conflicts of interest.
PII: S0890-8567(10)00073-0
doi:10.1016/j.jaac.2009.11.015
© 2010 American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Volume 49, Issue 4 , Pages 321-332, April 2010