Psychological functioning in pregnant women who experienced complex trauma

Women with DTD (<i>n</i> = 26) had more severe symptoms of PTSD, lower quality of prenatal attachment to the fetus, lower perceptions of maternal competence, less curiosity about mental states, and more severe disruptions in mentalizing trauma and adverse relationships than women who experienced childhood maltreatment but never met the diagnostic criteria for a DTD (<i>n</i> = 99) and women not exposed to childhood maltreatment (<i>n</i> = 248). In contrast, women who experienced childhood maltreatment but did not develop a DTD did not differ from women not exposed to maltreatment on all domains except the level of disruptions in mentalizing trauma and adverse relationships. Women who had a DTD in childhood or adolescence also had an 18.5-fold and 25.4-fold increased risk of having a mental health disorder during pregnancy compared, respectively, to women who had experienced maltreatment without DTD and women who had not experienced maltreatment. Persistent complex trauma, defined as the presence of a diagnosis of Complex PTSD during pregnancy, was present in over a third (34.6%) of women with DTD.