Infurna Frank J, Rivers Crystal T, Reich John, Zautra Alex J
Department of Psychology, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2015 Apr 7;10(4):e0121840. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0121840. eCollection 2015.
Childhood trauma is associated with premature declines in health in midlife and old age. Pathways that have been implicated, but less studied include social-emotional regulation, biological programming, and habitual patterns of thought and action. In this study we focused on childhood trauma's influence via alterations in social-emotional regulation to everyday life events, a pathway that has been linked to subsequent health effects. Data from a 30-day daily diary of community residents who participated in a study of resilience in Midlife (n = 191, Mage = 54, SD = 7.50, 54% women) was used to examine whether self-reports of childhood trauma were associated with daily well-being, as well as reported and emotional reactivity to daily negative and positive events. Childhood trauma reports were associated with reporting lower overall levels of and greater variability in daily well-being. Childhood trauma was linked to greater reports of daily negative events, but not to positive events. Focusing on emotional reactivity to daily events, residents who reported higher levels of childhood trauma showed stronger decreases in well-being when experiencing negative events and also stronger increases in well-being with positive events. For those reporting childhood trauma, higher levels of mastery were associated with stronger decreases in well-being with negative events and stronger increases in well-being with positive events, suggesting that mastery increases sensitivity to daily negative and positive events. Our results suggest that childhood trauma may lead to poorer health in midlife through disturbances in the patterns of everyday life events and responses to those events. Further, our findings indicate that mastery may have a different meaning for those who experienced childhood trauma. We discuss social-emotional regulation as one pathway linking childhood trauma to health, and psychosocial resources to consider when building resilience-promoting interventions for mitigating the detrimental health effects of childhood trauma.
童年创伤与中年及老年时健康状况过早下降有关。已被提及但较少研究的途径包括社会情感调节、生物编程以及思维和行为的习惯模式。在本研究中，我们关注童年创伤通过社会情感调节的改变对日常生活事件产生的影响，这一途径已被证明与后续的健康影响相关。我们使用了参与中年复原力研究的社区居民30天日常日记的数据（n = 191，平均年龄Mage = 54，标准差SD = 7.50，女性占54%），以检验童年创伤的自我报告是否与日常幸福感相关，以及对日常负面和正面事件的报告及情绪反应。童年创伤报告与较低的总体日常幸福感水平及更大的幸福感变异性相关。童年创伤与更多的日常负面事件报告相关，但与正面事件无关。关注对日常事件的情绪反应，报告童年创伤水平较高的居民在经历负面事件时幸福感下降更强烈，在经历正面事件时幸福感增加也更强烈。对于那些报告童年创伤的人来说，更高的掌控感与负面事件时幸福感更强的下降以及正面事件时幸福感更强的增加相关，这表明掌控感增加了对日常负面和正面事件的敏感性。我们的结果表明，童年创伤可能通过扰乱日常生活事件模式及对这些事件的反应，导致中年时健康状况更差。此外，我们的研究结果表明，掌控感对于那些经历过童年创伤的人可能具有不同的意义。我们将社会情感调节作为连接童年创伤与健康的一条途径进行了讨论，并探讨了在构建促进复原力的干预措施以减轻童年创伤对健康的有害影响时需要考虑的心理社会资源。
