Tian Lili, Zhou Zheng, Huebner E Scott
Philosophy and Social Science Laboratory of Reading and Development in Children and Adolescents (South China Normal University), Ministry of Education, Guangzhou 510631, People's Republic of China.
Philosophy and Social Science Laboratory of Reading and Development in Children and Adolescents (South China Normal University), Ministry of Education, Guangzhou 510631, People's Republic of China; School of Psychology, South China Normal University, Guangzhou 510631, People's Republic of China.
Child Abuse Negl. 2023 May;139:106135. doi: 10.1016/j.chiabu.2023.106135. Epub 2023 Mar 14.
Emotional abuse has been identified as a risk factor for children's depressive symptoms. However, the specific psychological mechanisms mediating this relation are not well understood.
This longitudinal study examined the relation of emotional abuse to subsequent depressive symptoms and the possible mediating role of emotion regulation among Chinese children.
The sample included 3633 children (45.5 % girls) with an average age of 9.96 years from a large city in southern China.
Participants completed multiple measurements of emotional abuse, emotion regulation, and depressive symptoms on five occasions at six-month intervals, controlling for sex, age, and physical abuse and emotional neglect at Time 1. Latent growth curve modeling was applied to examine the longitudinal relations among the variables.
Results showed (a) emotional abuse was significantly positively associated with subsequent depressive symptoms; (b) cognitive reappraisal mediated the relation between emotional abuse and depressive symptoms, but expressive suppression did not.
The results highlighted the mediating role of cognitive reappraisal in the relation between emotional abuse and depressive symptoms, suggesting that intervention programs targeting cognitive reappraisal may be effective to reduce the likelihood of depressive symptoms among Chinese children.
情感虐待已被确定为儿童抑郁症状的一个风险因素。然而，介导这种关系的具体心理机制尚不清楚。
这项纵向研究考察了中国儿童情感虐待与后续抑郁症状之间的关系以及情绪调节可能起到的中介作用。
样本包括来自中国南方一个大城市的3633名儿童（45.5%为女孩），平均年龄9.96岁。
参与者在6个月的间隔内分五次完成了对情感虐待、情绪调节和抑郁症状的多次测量，并对性别、年龄以及首次测量时的身体虐待和情感忽视进行了控制。采用潜在生长曲线模型来考察变量之间的纵向关系。
结果显示：（a）情感虐待与后续抑郁症状显著正相关；（b）认知重评介导了情感虐待与抑郁症状之间的关系，但表达抑制未起到中介作用。
研究结果凸显了认知重评在情感虐待与抑郁症状关系中的中介作用，表明针对认知重评的干预项目可能有效地降低中国儿童出现抑郁症状的可能性。
