Grant: CIHR New Investigator

To date, child maltreatment research has focused mainly on risk factors and poor outcomes with fewer studies examining resilience following child maltreatment and protective factors associated with mental health (e.g., absence of mental disorders and high quality of life). Resilience is generally described as the ability to maintain or regain mental health after adverse exposure. A protective factor is an indicator that is associated with an increased likelihood of a positive outcome. A review of the literature indicated that supportive relationships show a consistent association with healthy outcomes. What is still largely unknown is the prevalence of mental health in the general population following child maltreatment exposure in comparison to non-maltreated individuals. What other protective factors are associated with mental health and how can resilience be enhanced? Fostering resilience after child maltreatment has the potential to improve mental health for individuals and populations. The current proposal is unique because it will lead to new knowledge that will guide the development of intervention strategies to promote protective factors in facilitating resilience among individuals with a history of child maltreatment exposure across the lifespan-from adolescence to later adulthood. An epidemiological perspective will be applied to understand the prevalence of child maltreatment and mental health, the relationship between protective factors and mental health cross-sectionally and over a 3-year period. Noted strengths of this research include accessing large nationally representative Canadian and US data, examining sex and gender differences, using a lifespan approach, accessing longitudinal data, using high quality measures of child maltreatment and mental health, and inclusion of several protective factors in one study.