Most people carry something from childhood into their adult lives. For some it is a memory they can talk about easily. For others it sits quietly for years, and only surfaces later.
A new analysis of one of Europe's largest health studies has found that adults who experienced abuse or neglect as children were around twice as likely to develop depression later on.
The analysis, published in Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, drew on data from more than 159,000 adults in the German National Cohort.
Just over one in four participants said they had lived through at least one form of childhood trauma.
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Those who had were more than twice as likely to have had depression at some point in their lives. For symptoms that were still present in adulthood, the risk was almost three times as high.
Emotional forms of trauma showed the strongest link
The researchers looked at five kinds of childhood trauma. These were emotional, physical and sexual abuse, alongside emotional and physical neglect.
Emotional abuse and emotional neglect stood out as the categories most strongly tied to adult depression.
Overall, childhood adversity was linked to about one in four lifetime depression cases. It was tied to roughly a third of cases where symptoms were still present.
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The study is observational. That means it cannot prove that childhood trauma directly causes depression. But the size of the group, and the strength of the pattern, make the signal hard to dismiss.
Why women are diagnosed with depression more often than men
In this cohort, 17.7 percent of women reported ever having had depression, compared with 10.1 percent of men.
Women also reported abuse or neglect more often, particularly in emotional and sexual categories. Men reported physical abuse slightly more often.
That difference in exposure appears to explain much of the gender gap in depression rates, according to the researchers.
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The researchers argue that their findings underline the case for early prevention, especially against emotional abuse and neglect.
Adults who are struggling with low mood, and who carry difficult memories from childhood, can raise both with their doctor or a mental health professional.
The pattern fits with wider US data. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that preventing adverse childhood experiences could cut adult depression cases by around 78 percent.
The agency also projects meaningful drops in heart disease and other long-term conditions.
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This article is made and published by Ida-Marie Palm Varbæk, who may have used AI in the preparation.