We investigated the frequency and severity of childhood trauma exposure in alcohol dependents individuals compared to a non-dependent sample, and the potential associations between severity of childhood trauma exposure and alcohol-related outcomes. Consistent with previous research, we found that all types of childhood trauma were highly prevalent in treatment seeking alcoholics. Especially noteworthy was the high prevalence of emotional abuse: alcohol dependent subjects were more than 10 times as likely to have experienced emotional abuse than non-dependent subjects (note however that the confidence interval for this estimate was rather large). The observed differences in prevalence are probably more extreme than what would be observed if the comparison sample were non-treatment seeking heavy drinkers rather than a community sample. However, the mean severity scores for our CON subjects were very consistent with those found for other community samples (Scher et al., 2001). When we examined each trauma type for associations with alcohol dependence severity, emotional abuse emerged as the key predictor, even when controlling for other forms of abuse and neglect. Furthermore. the effect of emotional abuse on alcohol dependence severity
