The Impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences on Quality of Life among the Adult Offspring of Patients with Schizophrenia

Background: Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are the potentially traumatic events that occur in childhood. The past literature has shown ACEs that have been linked with negative physical and mental health outcomes in adulthood that may influence on quality of life (QoL) in adulthood. This study assesses the association of various types of ACEs with QoL in adulthood among offspring of schizophrenia patients. Materials and Methods: The study was conducted at hospital for mental health, Vadodara, for 6 months using ACEs–International Questionnaires and World Health Organization–BREF QoL in 66 participants, and independent t-test and Mann–Whitney U-test were used to assess the association between domains of childhood adversities with domains of QoL using SPSS software version 20 for their analysis. Results: The overall childhood adversities noticed were 87.88% (n = 58), and the mean scores of physical domain, psychological domain, social domain, and environmental domain (domains of QoL) were 53.59 ± 13.38, 46.12 ± 9.29, 39.94 ± 19.98, and 49.41 ± 15.44, respectively. We found that there was a significant association of physical abuse, household treating violently, physical neglect, and bullying with physical domain and psychological domain; bullying and household treating violently with the social domain and physical abuse, physical neglect, household treating violently and bullying with environmental domain and bullying with health-related QoL. Conclusions: There is a negative correlation of childhood adversities faced by adult offsprings of schizophrenia patients with QoL. This emphasizes the significance of childhood adversities faced by children of schizophrenia patients.