In general, childhood maltreatment was predictive of alcohol and nicotine persistence, and results remained robust despite control for other childhood adversities. However, models that included all maltreatment predictors together demonstrated reduced predictive value for maltreatment variables that had been significant when examined individually. This was likely due to multicollinearity, or co-occurrence of childhood maltreatment types, as phi coefficients for the maltreatment types ranged from 0.18–0.55. Thus, although these findings indicate that sexual abuse (and for nicotine, physical and emotional abuse) exerted unique effects beyond the general effect of childhood maltreatment, the findings also highlight the importance of the general effect of maltreatment.
