Given the evidence for familial confounding, we next examined the role of family variables as potential mediators of the childhood maltreatment–AAD association. We selected variables that correlated ρ=0.20 or greater with childhood maltreatment (see Table 1) and used these in a series of structural models. The correlation between childhood maltreatment and AAD (ρ=0.21) was compared with the residual correlation from a mediation model that regressed AAD and childhood maltreatment on the family-level variable. The change in the correlation reflects how much of the childhood maltreatment–AAD association could be accounted for by the family-level variable.
