Mood as a mediator of the link between child sexual abuse and psychosis

Abstract

The significance of affective changes in psychosis is increasingly acknowledged, as is the role of early traumatic events. In a previous paper, using data from the English Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey 2007 (APMS2007), strong associations between child sexual abuse (CSA) and psychosis were demonstrated, with some evidence of mediation by affect. In the current paper, we subjected the same dataset to formal tests of mediation. For CSA involving sexual intercourse, 38.5 % of the link was mediated, 30.0 % by depression and 8.5 % by anxiety. For all forms of contact abuse, 38.2 % was mediated, 29.1 % by depression and 9.1 % by anxiety.