The impact of parental acceptance and childhood maltreatment on mental health and physical pain in Burundian survivors of childhood sexual abuse

Abstract

Background: Parental support has been suggested to mitigate mental and physical consequences following childhood sexual abuse (CSA). However, many CSA survivors experience parental rejection post-CSA. Objective: We aimed to understand the impact of abuse-specific parental acceptance on posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and physical pain in Burundian CSA-survivors. We further assessed the significance of parental acceptance among known risk factors for predicting PTSD. Methods, participants, and settings: Participants (N = 131, 80.9 % female, mean age 16.21 years) were recruited via primary health care centers for survivors of sexual violence which survivors approached post-CSA. Survivors reported on PTSD symptoms, daytime/nighttime pain, and adverse childhood experiences in semi-structured interviews. Parental acceptance levels were categorized (acceptance, no acceptance, no contact) for mothers and fathers separately. KruskalWallis tests assessed group differences. Conditional random forests (CRF) evaluated the significance of parental acceptance in predicting PTSD symptom severity. Results: No significant differences regarding PTSD symptoms and physical pain between levels of maternal acceptance were obtained. Pairwise comparisons revealed significant differences in PTSD symptom severity between paternal acceptance and no acceptance (d = 1.04) and paternal acceptance and no contact (d = 0.81). The CRF identified paternal acceptance as important variable for the prediction of PTSD symptom severity. Even though results were less conclusive, medium effect sizes hint at less pain perception within the paternal acceptance group. Conclusions: The results highlight paternal acceptance as a potential risk or protective factor regarding psychological and possibly physical well-being in the aftermath of CSA, even in the context of other known risk factors.