Childhood Maltreatment, Adolescent Psychological Difficulties and Borderline Personality Features: A Person-Centered Approach

Childhood maltreatment is a well-known risk factor for poor psychological outcomes across the lifecycle, including internalizing and externalizing difficulties, personality pathology and non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI). Much less is known regarding the associations between specific types and combinations of maltreatment and these difficulties during adolescence. Given the limitations of variable-centered approaches that focus on correlations and associations, the present study used a person-centered approach (Latent Class Analysis) to examine whether groups of adolescents who experience specific types and combinations of maltreatment reported more internalizing and externalizing difficulties, borderline personality features, or NSSI. Participants were 327 adolescents and young adults aged 12 to 21 from the community, with 32% reporting some experiences of maltreatment. The findings indicate that for adolescents and young adults in the community, sexual abuse, as well as neglect and antipathy in combination with other forms of maltreatment were associated with significantly higher self-reported distress and dysfunction. Sexual abuse was linked to more internalizing difficulties, borderline personality features and NNSI, whereas both neglect and antipathy were associated with more internalizing and externalizing difficulties. Furthermore, neglect was associated with significantly more episodes of NNSI and antipathy with more self-reported borderline personality features