Most Adults with Dyslexia Were Physically Abused During Childhood

Researchers found that nearly one-third of adults with dyslexia were physically abused during childhood.

Researchers at the University of Toronto, in collaboration with University of North Carolina School of Medicine in Chapel Hill, found that thirty-five percent of the adults with dyslexia were more likely to report that they were physically abused before they had turned 18 years old, as compared to 7 percent of those without dyslexia.

Dyslexia is also known as development reading disorder, in which children face difficulty in learning and reading fluently with accurate comprehension despite having above-average intelligence. This is known to be the most common learning difficulty and also the most-recognized reading disorder.

"Even after accounting for age, race, sex and other early adversities such as parental addictions, childhood physical abuse was still associated with a six-fold increase in the odds of dyslexia" said co-author Esme Fuller-Thomson, professor and Sandra Rotman Endowed Chair at University of Toronto's Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work.

In this study, researchers looked at data of 13,054 adults aged 18 years and above. The participants belonged to the Canadian Community Health Survey. This included 1,020 respondents, who were physically abused during their childhood and 77 of them were diagnosed by a health professional with dyslexia.

"Our data do not allow us to know the direction of the association. It is possible that for some children, the presence of dyslexia and related learning problems may place them at relatively higher risk for physical abuse, perhaps due to adult frustrations with chronic learning failure," said study co-author, Stephen Hooper, professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics, and Associate Dean and Chair of Allied Health Sciences at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. 

Looking at the existing link between brain dysfunction and maltreatment, the researchers assume that the experience of physical abuse further contributed to learning problems, secondary to an increased neurological burden.

Fuller-Thomson asserts "Although we do not know if the abuse-dyslexia association is causative, with one-third of adults with dyslexia reporting childhood abuse, it is important that primary health care providers and school-based practitioners working with children with dyslexia screen them for physical abuse."

The finding was documented in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence.