THE IMPACT OF CHILDHOOD EMOTIONAL ABUSE - AN EXTENSION OF THE CHILD-ABUSE AND TRAUMA SCALE

Objective: There are few well-validated measures of childhood emotiona l abuse. This study explored the potential of the Child Abuse and Trau ma Scale (CATS; Sanders & Becker-Lausen, 1995) to yield such a measure . The CATS was originally devised to measure the extent of adverse sex ual, physical and neglectful experiences, bur contains items that also reflect the construct of emotional abuse. Method: A sample of 236 non clinical women completed the CATS and the Hospital Anxiety and Depress ion scale. A fourth subscale was drawn from the existing CATS items, r eflecting reported emotional abuse during childhood. Results: The conc urrent validity and internal consistency of this new subscale were tes ted, and were found to be at an acceptable level. Indeed, there was so me indication that the new childhood emotional abuse subscale played a more central role in anxiety and depression than did the original thr ee subscales. Conclusions: It is recommended that this revised version of the CATS should be used in future research and clinical practice, in order that the multidimensional nature of abuse can be better under stood. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd.