Short-term reliability of retrospective childhood trauma reports in schizophrenia spectrum psychosis

Abstract

Childhood trauma (CT) refers to severe early life adversities, especially experiences of parental abuse and neglect. Patients with schizophrenia spectrum psychosis (SSP) report higher CT rates than the general population. As CT assessment in SSP samples has been mainly conducted retrospectively through adult recollections of childhood adverse events, reservations about the reliability and validity of these reports have arisen. We sought to explore the short-term reliability of retrospective CT reports in sixty-three patients with SSP, by assessing the concurrent validity and test-retest reliability of the data. Two CT self-report measures, the Childhood Experience of Care and Abuse Questionnaire (CECA.Q) and the Parental Bonding Instrument (PBI) were employed for this task. High concurrent validity was detected between CECA.Q antipathy scales and PBI care and overprotection scales; and between CECA.Q neglect scales and PBI care scales. High test-retest reliability was confirmed for all CECA.Q and PBI scales. Our findings indicate that retrospective CT self-report measures are a reliable means of assessing early life adversities in SSP. However, further provisions should be taken to increase the reliability of retrospective reports, especially corroboration of the events through other sources and removal of latent confounders, such as psychopathology, memory fallacies and social desirability biases.