Crow Thomas, Cross Dorthie, Powers Abigail, Bradley Bekh
Emory University School of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, 49 Jesse Hill Dr SE, Atlanta, GA 30303, USA.
Atlanta VA Medical Center, Mental Health Service, 1670 Clairmont Road, Decatur, GA 30033, USA; Emory University School of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, 49 Jesse Hill Dr SE, Atlanta, GA 30303, USA.
Child Abuse Negl. 2014 Oct;38(10):1590-8. doi: 10.1016/j.chiabu.2014.05.015. Epub 2014 Jul 14.
Abuse and neglect in childhood are well-established risk factors for later psychopathology. Past research has suggested that childhood emotional abuse may be particularly harmful to psychological development. The current cross-sectional study employed multiple regression techniques to assess the effects of childhood trauma on adulthood depression and emotion dysregulation in a large sample of mostly low-income African Americans recruited in an urban hospital. Bootstrap analyses were used to test emotion dysregulation as a potential mediator between emotional abuse in childhood and current depression. Childhood emotional abuse significantly predicted depressive symptoms even when accounting for all other childhood trauma types, and we found support for a complementary mediation of this relationship by emotion dysregulation. Our findings highlight the importance of emotion dysregulation and childhood emotional abuse in relation to adult depression. Moving forward, clinicians should consider the particular importance of emotional abuse in the development of depression, and future research should seek to identify mechanisms through which emotional abuse increases risk for depression and emotion dysregulation.
童年期的虐待和忽视是日后出现精神病理学问题的既定风险因素。过去的研究表明，童年期情感虐待可能对心理发展特别有害。当前的横断面研究采用多元回归技术，在一家城市医院招募的大量主要为低收入非裔美国人样本中，评估童年创伤对成年期抑郁和情绪失调的影响。采用自抽样分析来检验情绪失调是否是童年期情感虐待与当前抑郁之间的潜在中介因素。即使在考虑了所有其他童年创伤类型之后，童年期情感虐待仍能显著预测抑郁症状，并且我们发现情绪失调对这种关系起到了补充性中介作用，这一结果得到了支持。我们的研究结果凸显了情绪失调和童年期情感虐待与成年期抑郁之间的关系。展望未来，临床医生应认识到情感虐待在抑郁症发展过程中的特殊重要性，未来的研究应致力于确定情感虐待增加抑郁和情绪失调风险的机制。
