Complex posttraumatic stress disorder (CPTSD) follows persistent and repeated trauma and is a serious mental health problem among women. One of the strongest predictors of CPTSD symptoms is childhood trauma, especially child abuse and neglect, both of which are traumas that tend to be persistent and repeated. CPTSD is also associated with intimate partner violence (IPV; physical, emotional, and/or sexual violence in an intimate relationship), a trauma that, similar to child abuse and neglect, is also persistent and repeated. However, it is unclear how child abuse/neglect and IPV may jointly influence CPTSD symptoms vis-à-vis other traumatic events. In this study, we examined the relative effects of child abuse/ neglect and IPV on CPTSD symptoms over and above other traumatic events in a sample of women (N = 553) using a partial least squares approach to multiple regression and structural equation modeling. Results indicated that in general childhood trauma was the strongest predictor of CPTSD symptoms. However, when we analyzed specific aspects of child abuse, child neglect, and IPV, we found that childhood emotional abuse was the primary predictor of CPTSD symptoms over and above the effects of other traumatic life events, with sexual and emotional IPV also having small effects. These results highlight the salient effects of childhood emotional trauma on CPTSD symptoms among women, underscoring the importance of assessing for this in women presenting for treatment of CPTSD.

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Objective: Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a pervasive and common form of violence against women. IPV is multifaceted, with physical, sexual, and/or psychological means of perpetration, and has detrimental effects on women’s mental health. IPV generally affects women; however, how IPV differentially affects different groups of women is less clear. Women who are socioeconomically vulnerable are often considered at risk for IPV, although women in college are also often the topic of IPV research due both to high rates of IPV and to ease of study recruitment. There is increasing research on the effects of IPV in a third group of women, those recruited through online platforms (i.e., crowdsourcing). How IPV differs across these three samples has yet to be examined. Method: In this study, we examined differences in IPV exposure across three samples of women, at risk (n = 144), college (n = 654), and crowdsourced (n = 168), using a Bayesian approach to general linear modeling. Results: Results indicated that the majority of women in each sample experienced some IPV. Results further suggested that women in the crowdsourced sample had the highest exposure to IPV in general and to physical IPV, sexual IPV, and IPV-related injury in particular, whereas women in the at-risk sample had the highest rates of psychological IPV. Conclusion: These findings highlight the importance of sampling in studies of IPV and thus have ramifications for future research.

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