Exposure of Child Maltreatment Leads to a Risk of Mental Illness and Poor Prognosis in Taiwan: A Nationwide Cohort Study from 2000 to 2015

Objective: To investigate whether children with maltreatment exposure were associated with the risk of psychiatric disorders, suicide, and death. Methods: A retrospective cohort study was conducted, with 1592 child maltreatment cases and 6368 comparison cohort (1:4) matched for gender, age, and index year, from the Longitudinal Generation Tracking Database (LGTD2000) sampled from Taiwan National Health Insurance Research Database (NHIRD) in 2000, backtracking between 2000–2015 in Taiwan. The stratified Cox regression model was used to compare the risk of developing a mental illness and poor prognosis during the 15 years of follow-up. Results: There were 473 in the cohort with child maltreatment (675.10 cases per 100,000 person years) and 1289 in the comparison cohort (453.82 cases per 100,000 person years) that developed mental illness and poor prognosis. The stratified Cox regression model revealed that the adjusted hazard ratio (HR) was 1.91 to 11.76 (p < 0.05) after adjusting for monthly income level, occupation, and CCI after violence. Conclusion: Exposure to child maltreatment is associated with the risk of psychiatric disorders, but not suicide or death. This finding could be a reminder for clinicians about the mental health problems in patients with child maltreatment.