East vs. West: Differences in the prevalence of child maltreatment in Germany before the reunification

VORTRAGENDE: T. Fleischer & C. Ulke

Purpose Child maltreatment is discussed as a potential cause of several health problems in the elderly, including obesity, anxiety and depression. Moreover, political systems may have an effect on the prevalence of various dimensions of childhood maltreatment, like emotional and physical neglect and abuse. As in the case of pre-reunification Germany, which was split between two political systems, both systems had distinct approaches towards childhood. Despite this, epidemiological studies on the prevalence of childhood maltreatment in the pre-unification era often present data from West and East Germany as pooled population with a sample bias—owing to the fact that the majority of data is from the West.

Methods We present regional and representational data on the maltreatment of children before the reunification from East- and West-Germany, including the Study of Health in Pomerania, the Cooperative Health Research in the Region Augsburg, and representative samples of the German population. We report differences between the populations and sexes using the Childhood Trauma Screener, an instrument for the assessment of childhood maltreatment.

Results In the regional comparison, the majority of maltreatment categories were more often reported in the West-German sample, indicting a higher prevalence of maltreatment in former FRG as compared to GDR. For most categories, these results were replicated in preliminary analyses in the representational sample.

Conclusion Our results might be attributed to local effects e.g. less/more experienced maltreatment, or cultural differences in the willingness to report maltreatment. Alternatively, our findings may be a result of the differences in political systems. Our results show that data from pre-reunification Germany should be pooled with caution.

Publication History

Article published online:
02 September 2021