Background: WHO ranked depression as the third cause of burden of disease worldwide. 30% of women and over 40% of men reported at least one form of childhood maltreatment. Current literature shows association between depression and childhood maltreatment. However, there are still few studies looking at treatment for chronically depressed inpatients with early traumas.
Methods: The sample consists of patients with chronic depression (N=126) drawn from the larger sample of inpatients included in the randomised trial on the effectiveness of brief and intensive psychodynamic psychotherapy (de Roten & Ambresin and al., 2017).
Results: Overall childhood maltreatment, sexual abuse and emotional abuse were associated with depression severity at intake. Overall childhood maltreatment, physical neglect and sexual abuse were associated with lower rates of remission and treatment response. When examining the association of remission and response according to treatment groups, sexual abuse was still associated with lower remission rates in both treatment groups. Overall childhood maltreatment, as well as physical abuse were associated with lower remission rates in the TAU group. As regards response, physical neglect in the IBPP group was the only subscale associated with lower response rates.
Limitation: Only 16% of the sample had a remission, and 33% showed a response. The number of remissions being so low, the power of the statistical analysis may have been too low to significantly detect smaller differences.
Conclusion: This study shows that childhood maltreatment has an effect on inpatient depression severity, remission and response rate. Moreover, the effect of early traumas on depression is treatment dependant.