Elsevier

Child Abuse & Neglect

Volume 38, Issue 1, January 2014, Pages 65-75
Child Abuse & Neglect

Relationship between adverse early experiences, stressors, psychosocial resources and wellbeing

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2013.07.017Get rights and content

Abstract

The study examined a diathesis stress model of the relationship between adverse child experiences (ACEs), stressors and psychosocial resources to explore their relationship with wellbeing. A cross sectional study was conducted across two mental health and addiction treatment centers. 176 individuals were interviewed using a demographics form, SCID-DSM-IV(First, Spitzer, Gibbon, &Williams, 2002), Child Trauma Questionnaire (Bernstein & Fink, 1998), NEO-Five Factor Inventory (Costa & McCrae, 1992), Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire (Petrides, 2009), The Coping, Inventory for Stressful Situations (CISS) (Endler & Parker, 1990), Recent Life Events Questionnaire (Department of Health, 1985) and perceived social support from family, friends and religion. Multiple, regressions and correlations were used to analyze the data. All early experiences, except physical, abuse and death of a parent in childhood, were significantly correlated with increased number of, stressors and lower wellbeing scores. This is possibly because of sample specific issues. Number of stressors partially mediated the relationship between ACEs and wellbeing. Increased number of ACEs was related to higher neuroticism and emotion-focused coping and lower conscientiousness, agreeableness, trait emotional intelligence and task coping scores. These resources were significantly related to increased stressors and lower wellbeing. Distraction and emotion coping significantly moderated the relationship between number of stressors and wellbeing. These findings support the diathesis stress model and indicate that there are significant relationships between ACEs, psychosocial, resources, stressors and wellbeing. Recommendations to improve wellbeing are discussed.

Section snippets

Impact of early experiences on psychosocial resources

It is postulated that early internal working models of attachment or caring experiences (Ainsworth, 1969, Bowlby, 1973) organize and influence subsequent personality development and interpersonal relations throughout the life cycle (Blatt & Blass, 1990). Linehan (1993) suggested that experiences of an invalidating environment during childhood contributes to emotional dysregulation by failing to teach the child to label and modulate arousal, to tolerate distress, or to trust their emotional

Relationship between ACEs, psychosocial resources and well-being

The relationship between ACEs and personality traits is important as personality traits are robust predictors of important outcomes such as psychological well-being (Wihelm, Wedgwood, Parker, Geerligs, & Hadzi-Pavlovis, 2010) and life satisfaction (Gannon & Ranzijn, 2005). Some studies suggest that individuals who experience many ACEs are more likely to develop personality disorders (PDs) in adulthood (e.g., Afifi et al., 2011, Widom et al., 2009), yet other studies have found that many

Protective factors in diathesis stress model

The diathesis stress model recognizes that individuals may have protective factors that promote resilience against stressors (Slavik & Croake, 2006). Social support is hypothesized to be a protective factor. The main-effect model suggests that social support has a general beneficial effect regardless of stressors, as it provides positive experiences and a sense of self-worth and stability in the individual's social life (Cohen & Wills, 1985). The moderating/buffering hypothesis postulates that

Current study

This study examined the relationship between ACEs, stressors, and well-being and examined if the number of current stressors mediates the relationship between ACEs and well-being. It examined if perceived support from family, friends, religion, and coping styles moderated the relationship between stressors and well-being. It was hypothesized that ACEs would be correlated with higher number of current stressors and lower levels of well-being. It was expected that number of stressors would

Method

A cross sectional study was conducted in two mental health and addiction treatment centers in Dublin, Ireland. Ethics approval was granted by ethics committees in Trinity College Dublin's School of Psychology and by the two treatment centers. Participants were recruited from service users consecutively referred to the treatment centers between June 2010 and January 2011 (n = 141). The first 35 family/friends of service users who attended the treatment center to visit with no mental health or

The relationship between early experiences and well-being and stressors

All early experiences, except physical abuse and death of a parent in childhood, were significantly correlated with number of stressors and well-being. These ACEs were related to increased stressors and lower well-being scores (see Table 1). A moderate negative correlation (r = −.41, p < .01) was found between number of stressors and well-being score.

Multiple regression was used to examine if the relationship between number of ACEs and well-being score was mediated by number of stressors. Baron and

Discussion

All ACEs (except physical abuse and death of a parent in childhood) were correlated with lower well-being and increased number of stressors. This finding supports a growing literature linking ACEs with reduced well-being and increased stressors in later life (e.g., Douglas et al., 2010). Number of ACEs experienced had a strong correlation with well-being and number of stressors, which lends support to previous research findings that ACEs contribute additively to risk of increasing stressors and

Conclusion

ACEs were correlated with psychosocial resources, number of stressors, and well-being, which provide support to previous research findings that ACEs contribute additively to risk of increasing stressors and reducing well-being. This finding suggests individuals’ abuse histories should be thoroughly assessed as many ACEs may be impacting on the individual. ACEs increased the risk of lower well-being or clinical disorder later in life through increased life stressors. Therefore abuse victims

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