Childhood trauma is common, with an estimated ~20–66% of individuals in the United States experiencing at least one traumatic event before adulthood (Blaustein, 2013; Finkelhor, Turner, Ormrod, & Hamby, 2009; Read, Ouimette, White, Colder, & Farrow, 2011). Childhood trauma encompasses interpersonal victimization (e.g. physical, sexual abuse/violence) as well as non-interpersonal events (e.g. accidents, illness, loss; Briggs-Gowan, Carter, & Ford, 2012; Mongillo, Briggs-Gowan, Ford, & Carter, 2009). Exposure to childhood trauma is thought to disrupt ‘normative’ stages of childhood development, including cognitive, emotional, and social skills development, and predisposes children to psychiatric sequelae (D'Andrea, Ford, Stolbach, Spinazzola, & van der Kolk, 2012; Mongillo et al., 2009; Teicher & Samson, 2013), including posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (Duncan, Saunders, Kilpatrick, Hanson, & Resnick, 1996; Khoury, Tang, Bradley, Cubells, & Ressler, 2010) and alcohol use disorder (AUD) (Schückher, Sellin, Fahlke, & Engström, 2018). Experiencing childhood trauma yields PTSD and AUD hazard ratios of ~1.4–3.5 (Sartor et al., 2011, 2012) thus, it is important to improve our understanding of the mechanisms by which exposure to trauma may impact development and psychiatric outcomes.
