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. 2018 Feb;23(1):44-53.
doi: 10.1177/1077559517720070. Epub 2017 Jul 14.

Longitudinal Relations Between Childhood Maltreatment, Maltreatment-Specific Shame, and Postpartum Psychopathology

Rena A Menke  1 , Diana Morelen  2 , Valerie A Simon  3   4 , Katherine L Rosenblum  1   5 , Maria Muzik  1   5
Affiliations

Longitudinal Relations Between Childhood Maltreatment, Maltreatment-Specific Shame, and Postpartum Psychopathology

Rena A Menke et al. Child Maltreat. 2018 Feb.

Abstract

The persistence of shame-based reactions to child maltreatment (CM) has been associated with poor posttraumatic adjustment. Despite evidence that the postpartum period is a vulnerable time for women with CM histories, little is known about the consequences of maltreatment-specific (MS) shame for postpartum functioning. The current study examined individual differences in MS shame among a sample of women during the postpartum period ( n = 100) as well as prospective relations from MS shame to postpartum psychopathology at 6-, 12-, 15-, and 18-month postpartum. Linear growth curve (LGC) analyses showed that MS shame predicted higher levels of depression symptoms but not post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms at all time points whereas path analyses showed that shame mediated the relations from multi-maltreatment to both depression and PTSD symptoms at all time points. Results point to the long-term consequences of MS shame during postpartum and the importance of attending to shame in clinical care of maltreatment survivors who present with postpartum psychopathology.

Keywords: childhood maltreatment; depression; multilevel models; perinatal adjustment; post-traumatic stress disorder; shame.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Model of shame mediating the relation between maltreatment characteristics and depression or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms. Depression and PTSD values and indirect effects are presented in Tables 4 and 5. Asterisk (*) indicates significant direct effects in shame and depression model; symbol indicates significant direct effects in shame and PTSD model.
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