ABSTRACT
Background: Childhood psychological maltreatment in the country paralyses children personal career integration, national development and achievement of plans laid in a given country. In most of the time, psychological maltreatment is masked within other form of child abuse and neglect when they co exit. Knowing the prevalence of childhood psychological maltreatment and the impact associated with trauma of psychological maltreatment synergize the existing evidence-based interventions that are applied to prevent psychological maltreatment. If it is left unattended childhood psychological maltreatment might lead to mental and psychological problems. This study investigates psychological maltreatment: prevalence and its relationship with psychological stress and self-esteem among school students in Tanzania and China. Methods: Participants were selected by multistage cluster sampling respectively in China and Tanzania. In China, participants were recruited randomly from four middle schools in two cities, Xiaogan and Ezhou. In Tanzania, participants were recruited randomly from seven secondary schools in five regions, Kilimanjaro, Tanga, Iringa, Mtwara and Dar es Salaam. Adverse Childhood Experience questionnaire (ACE), Rosenberg self-esteem scale, and Kessler psychological distress scale (K10) were used to gather data. Results: The sample consisted of 555 (55.5%) female and 445 (45.5%) male (N = 1000) of Tanzanian school students, On the other hand in China the sample size was 3193. Female students were 1650 (51.7%) as compared to male 1543 (48.3%). The average self-esteem score of student in Tanzania was (26.14% ± 7.45 std deviation) and in China was (22.12 ± 4.734 std deviation), in Tanzania male have higher 392 (55.3%) self-esteem scores as compared female 317 (44.7), while in China results showed that female have higher self-esteem 1223 (50.2%) than male 1211 (49.8%). There was a strong positive correlation between psychological maltreatment and self-esteem (r = 0.55, p < 0.001), whereas the correlation between psychological maltreatment and psychological distress was significantly but weak (r = −0.086, p = 0.007). Conclusion: Psychological maltreatment is prevalent in our setting and statistically significant positively affected self-esteem among Tanzanian and China adolescents and is associated with high levels of psychological distress during adolescence. Moreover, exposure to psychological maltreatment during childhood was found to be associated with an increased likelihood of experiencing psychological distress in adolescence. Urgent preventive measures aiming at reducing the incidence of childhood psychological maltreatment is necessary to lessen the incidence of low self-esteem and psychological distress among Tanzanian and China adolescents.