Childhood Maltreatment Linked to Depression Relapse via Brain Structural Alterations

Childhood maltreatment is associated with more severe, chronic, and recurrent depressions and has been linked to small volumes of specific brain areas. To learn more, researchers examined the 2-year clinical outcomes of 110 adults who were hospitalized for depression in Germany and who underwent brain MRIs and completed a questionnaire on childhood trauma at baseline.

Participants were divided into a nonrelapse group (n=35) and a relapse group (n=75), and analyses controlled for baseline depression severity and type and amount of medication taken. Higher trauma scores were associated with greater likelihood of relapse at 2 years. Both relapse and high trauma scores were associated with low baseline cortical surface area, primarily in the rig…