Dr. Bernstein and Colleagues Reply

Preferential association between childhood emotional abuse and bipolar disorder

“…A recall bias in trauma assessment due to time elapsed since exposure is unlikely in our study (no correlation between CTQ total score and age at interview in both groups, no correlation between CTQ total score and duration of illness or the number of major episodes among bipolar patients; data not shown). Furthermore, the CTQ is a reliable, valid trauma questionnaire and its psychometric properties have shown high levels of face validity, internal consistency, test-retest validity and good convergent validity with structured interviews (Bernstein & Fink, 1998;Bernstein et al, 1994;Bernstein et al, 2003;Paivio & Cramer, 2004). Nevertheless and ideally, external sources of information should have been used to check validity.…”

“…Childhood traumatic events were recorded using the short version of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ), a 28-item self-report measure developed by Bernstein et al (Bernstein et al, 1994). This questionnaire showed excellent test-retest reliability, as well as convergent and discriminant validity with a structured trauma interview.…”

Trauma histories of men and women in residential drug treatment: The Scottish evidence

“…For instance, sexual abuse has been assessed in contrasting ways. Some authors have relied on age differentials between victims and abusers in their definitions or different age limits for victims [4] [5] [6]. For example, one of the indicators of sexual abuse in Bernstein et al's Childhood Trauma Questionnaire [6] is the response to the statement 'When I was growing up..…”

“…'have you ever been sexually abused' [7] [8] to a set of screening questions i.e. 'In the past 30 days, to what degree were you bothered by past experience involving a) emotional abuse; b) physical abuse and c) sexual abuse; from the EuropASI [9] to multiple questions about experiences that fit a definition of abuse within mention of the word 'abuse' [10] or the explicit mention of feeling abused as in the in-depth 53 item or 90 item versions of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire [6].…”

“…The IPTRP project was funded with the objective of establishing a Concerted Action (CA) addressing the 'needs of emerging dependency groups' referenced in Area 6 (public health research including health service research) of the BIOMED II programme of the European Commission. One of the clinical purposes of this cross-sectional retrospective study was to estimate the prevalence of childhood trauma histories in men and women in drug treatment in Scotland using the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire [6]. The use of such a validated self-report instrument within a face-to-face interview offered the research team one of the better methods for the assessment of childhood trauma for clinical interpretations and potentially cross-national comparisons.…”