Our findings suggest that emotional abuse may play a prominent role in the development of alcohol dependence, independent from the effects of other types of abuse. Previous studies of childhood trauma exposure and alcohol dependence have mostly focused on sexual and physical abuse and, for the most part, significant associations with alcohol dependence have been observed primarily in women (Copeland et al., 2011; Widom et al., 2007). Epidemiologically, treatment-seeking alcoholics are more likely to be male (LoCastro et al., 2008), a finding that is reflected in our study sample. This is one possible explanation for why we did not find the previously established associations between sexual abuse and alcohol dependence severity. It is also possible that previous studies, by not measuring or adjusting for emotional abuse, were unable to account for the contribution of this type of trauma, which is likely to have co-occurred with the sexual abuse (in our sample of alcohol dependent individuals, 70% of those who experienced sexual abuse also experienced emotional abuse). While we controlled for gender effects in our analyses, the results indicate that gender
