Background: The aim of this present study was to compare the prevalence and type of trauma experienced by community\nsample with the outpatient sample with mental disorders.\nMethods: A total of 354 outpatients, aged 14-35 years old, with mood disorders, schizophrenia and other psychotic\ndisorders, adjustment disorder and anxiety disorder were recruited from a tertiary psychiatric hospital. A total of\n100 healthy controls were recruited from the Singapore general population by snowballing. The Childhood Trauma\nQuestionnaire-Short Form (CTQ-SF) designed to measure childhood trauma and the severity (e.g., physical abuse,\nemotional abuse, sexual abuse, physical neglect and emotional neglect) was administered to participants. Sociodemographic\nand clinical characteristics were obtained from interviews with the participants and from outpatientsâ??\nmedical records, respectively. Independent sample t tests and Chi-square tests were used to investigate the differences\nbetween the outpatient and community samples.\nResults: Overall the CTQ-SF total and domain scores indicated that outpatient sample experienced higher rate of\ntraumatic life events in childhood than community sample. Two most reported trauma types were emotional abuse\n(n = 81, 59.1%) and physical neglect (n = 74, 54%) reported by the mood disorder group. In the community sample,\nemotional neglect (n = 46, 46%) and physical neglect (n = 18, 18%) were the most commonly reported trauma type.\nOverall outpatient sample (n = 80, 22.6%) and community sample (n = 28, 28%) reported at least one type of trauma.\nConclusion: The findings indicate higher rates of CTQ-SF total and domain scores in outpatient sample demonstrating\na higher rate of traumatic life events in childhood compared to community sample. Further research in childhood\ntrauma is needed to improve the knowledge in psychiatric clinic practices.
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