Psychological maltreatment and its relationship with self-esteem and psychological stress among adolescents in Tanzania: a community based, cross-sectional study

BACKGROUND: Despite the growing recognition of childhood psychological maltreatment as a public health and human rights concern, it remains rampant in developing countries including Tanzania and has a negative impact on the victim’s self-esteem during adolescence. There is a lack of published studies in Tanzania that examine the relationship between childhood psychological maltreatment and self-esteem during adolescence. This study describes the relationship between childhood psychological maltreatment and self-esteem and psychological distress among adolescents in Tanzania. METHODS: This was a cross-sectional, community-based study of secondary school students that was conducted in randomly selected secondary schools in five regions in Tanzania between April 2016 and February 2017. A multistage cluster sampling technique was employed to obtain the required number of study participants. The Rosenberg self-esteem scale, Kessler psychological distress scale (K10) and Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ) questionnaires were used to measure the variables in the study. Pearson correlation analysis was used to analyse the correlation between variables (Psychological maltreatment and self-esteem and psychological distress). RESULTS: A sample of 1000 secondary school students was recruited for this study, of which 553 (55.3%) were males and 447 (44.7%) were females. The mean age at presentation was 16.45 ± 6.42 years. Out of the 1000 participants, 766 (76.6%) experienced psychological maltreatment. Emotional abuse was reported in 24.7% of the participants, while emotional neglect was reported in 51.9% of cases. There was a strong positive correlation between psychological maltreatment and self-esteem (r = 0.55, p < 0.001), whereas the correlation between psychological maltreatment and psychological distress was significantly but weak (r = − 0.086, p = 0.007). The results also show a strong positive correlation between psychological distress and self-esteem (r = 0.16, p < 0.001). CONCLUSION: Finding from this study demonstrated that childhood psychological maltreatment is prevalent in our setting and is associated with psychological distress and low self-esteem during adolescence. Urgent intervention targeting at reducing occurrence of childhood psychological maltreatment is necessary to reduce the incidence of low self-esteem and psychological distress among Tanzanian adolescents.