The Impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences on Mental Health and Suicidal Behaviors: A study from Portuguese Language Countries

• Autor(a) principal: Silveira, Daniela Filipa Nunes
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.6/13169
• topic: Aces; Childhood; Cplc; Mental Health; Suicide Attempt; Suicide Ideation; Domínio/Área Científica::Ciências Sociais::Psicologia

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are frequent and intense experiences of stress during childhood (WHO, 2020a), which can be associated with physical and mental health problems throughout the life course. In March 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a pandemic (WHO, 2020b), which led to the adoption of several measures by different countries and governments, aiming to prevent the spread of the virus and protect the population. However, these measures, such as social isolation, seem to have unintentionally contributed to children and adolescents, coming from dysfunctional households and with a history of ACEs, being continuously exposed to these events (Bryce, 2020). The literature demonstrates that the pandemic had negative effects on the parents' mental health (Brown et al., 2020; Zafar et al., 2021), which may have potentiated the occurrence of ACEs. Few studies have examined this topic in the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLC), therefore this Dissertation and the study developed aim to assess the impact of ACEs on mental health and suicidal behaviors in a sample of participants from the CPLC. This study used an online survey that included a sociodemographic questionnaire, the Brief Symptom Inventory-18 (BSI-18) to assess somatization, depression, and anxiety symptoms, and overall mental functioning, the Suicidal Behaviors Questionnaire-Revised (SBQ-R) to assess suicidal behaviors, and the Family Adverse Childhood Experiences Questionnaire to assess the report of ACEs. The sample consists of 1006 participants aged between 18 and 80 years (mean=41.76; SD=14.19). Emotional abuse was the most reported ACE (32.7%) and participants from Brazil had higher levels of somatization, depression, anxiety, and suicide ideation and attempt, while participants from Portugal had a higher probability of suicide in the future. ACEs were strong and significant predictors of psychological symptoms and the likelihood of suicide in the future, with emotional abuse and emotional neglect being the domains with the greatest contribution, respectively. The results obtained demonstrate that ACEs are a prevalent and general phenomenon across countries. Therefore, it is urgent to alert policymakers and mental health professionals of the need to intervene with children and families to ensure their adjusted development, thus promoting the quality of life and well-being of populations.