Still, with few exceptions, prospective studies measure childhood abuse with self-report among those aged 18 years and older (i.e., retrospectively) and are therefore still download the handbook subject to this limitation to varying degrees. Second, it is generally accepted that traumatic stress, such as physical abuse, occurs in clusters over time rather than in isolated single incidents. We were unable to measure other traumatic exposures here but it may be that these outcomes are associated with a more complex nexus of traumatic experiences, rather than just physical abuse alone. Future studies that can better measure and thereby untangle the potential role of a range of trauma in respiratory and other chronic health conditions are needed. Third, the response rate was 60.8% that may result in limited generalizability.

Fourth, the assessment of respiratory disease was not specific to one disease, and therefore it remains unclear whether these relationships may differ by disease (e.g., asthma vs. emphysema). In particular, whereas the onset of emphysema occurs during adulthood with few exceptions, asthma onset frequently occurs during childhood. The vague measure of respiratory disease may combine, for instance, those with early onset persistent asthma and emphysema. Although both have been shown to be independently associated with childhood abuse/trauma in previous studies (e.g., Cohen et al., 2008; Romans, Belaise, Martin, Morris, & Raffi, 2002), this could partly explain why the role of smoking was not as prominent as expected in the relationship between childhood abuse and respiratory disease as this would predictably relate to emphysema but not necessarily childhood onset asthma.

Future studies that include more precise measurement of specific respiratory diseases in adulthood will be needed next. Finally, the complexities observed in the relationships among smoking, respiratory illness, depression, and panic disorder deserve further scrutiny. Funding National Institute on Drug Abuse (DA20892) to R.D.G. Declaration of Interests None declared.
Retrospective assessment of lifetime history of health risk behaviors and related disorders is widely used, especially in transdisciplinary research of how intra-individual and contextual factors interact over time (Abrams, Leslie, Mermelstein, Kobus, & Clayton, 2003).

In the specific case of tobacco use, retrospective life history data are important for studies of the natural history of tobacco use and nicotine dependence (Brigham et al., 2010), the temporal patterning GSK-3 of tobacco use with co-occurring risk behaviors and morbidities over time (Bernstein, Zvolensky, Schmidt, & Sachs-Ericcson, 2007; Kahler et al., 2008), and research on the prevalence, contexts, and correlates of tobacco and other substance use disorders (cf., Degenhardt et al., 2008).