Child maltreatment has been identified as a significant problem, both within India and outside. According to UNICEF, over the last decade, there has been a growing recognition about this, but the problem has remained unresolved largely due to being underreported and undocumented. Previous research in this area has reported inconsistent gender differences across the world. Besides, there are shreds of evidence to suggest that childhood maltreatment would be associated with nightmares later in life, but a handful of studies exist in this context. Moreover, there is a paucity of research concerning the interaction effect of gender and group (nightmare sufferer vs non-sufferer) on childhood maltreatment. Owing to the insufficient research and inconsistent findings, the present study aimed to investigate gender differences in childhood maltreatment among nightmare sufferers as compared to non-sufferers. A total of 120 participants were selected from New Delhi. The results of two-way ANOVA suggest that the nightmares later in life would be associated with the abuse and neglect experienced during childhood as nightmare sufferer group reported having higher rates of child abuse and neglect than non-sufferers. It also suggests that male participants in general experience childhood maltreatment more than females; however, emotional abuse was experienced by males only if they belonged to the nightmare sufferer group.

虐待儿童已被认为是印度国内外的一个重大问题。据联合国儿童基金会称，在过去的十年里，人们越来越认识到这一点，但这个问题仍未得到解决，很大程度上是由于报告不足和没有记录。此前该领域的研究报告称，世界各地的性别差异不一致。此外，有大量证据表明童年虐待与以后的生活中的噩梦有关，但在这方面存在一些研究。此外，关于性别和群体（噩梦患者与非噩梦患者）对儿童虐待的相互作用影响的研究也很少。由于研究不足且结果不一致，本研究旨在调查噩梦患者与非噩梦患者在儿童期虐待方面的性别差异。共有 120 名参与者来自新德里。双向方差分析的结果表明，晚年的噩梦可能与童年时期经历的虐待和忽视有关，因为噩梦患者群体报告的儿童虐待和忽视率高于非患者。它还表明，男性参与者总体上比女性经历过更多的童年虐待；然而，只有属于噩梦患者群体的男性才会遭受情感虐待。