Elsevier

Child Abuse & Neglect

Volume 80, June 2018, Pages 123-133
Child Abuse & Neglect

Do adverse childhood experiences predict adult interpersonal difficulties? The role of emotion dysregulation

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2018.03.006Get rights and content

Abstract

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are risk factors for interpersonal difficulties in adulthood, however the mechanism that underlies this association is unknown. The current study investigated the association of a wide range of ACEs with interpersonal difficulties in adulthood, and tested whether emotion dysregulation mediated the relationship between ACEs and interpersonal difficulties. Patients over the age of 18 were recruited from primary care clinics (N = 4006). Participants completed self-report questionnaires that assessed ACEs, emotion dysregulation, and interpersonal difficulties. Results indicated that, after controlling for a range of demographic variables, each type of ACE significantly predicted increased interpersonal difficulties and that cumulative ACEs predicted increased interpersonal difficulties, F(8, 3137) = 39.68, p < .001, R2 = 0.09. Further, emotion dysregulation mediated the association between ACEs and interpersonal difficulties, B = 0.79, SE = 0.09, 95% CI [0.64, 0.97]. These findings emphasize the role of childhood adversity on interpersonal functioning in adulthood, and highlight emotion dysregulation as a mechanism by which this association occurs. Results have the potential to inform preventative and treatment efforts to improve adaptive outcomes among individuals with a history of childhood adversity.

Section snippets

Do adverse childhood experiences predict adult interpersonal difficulties? The role of emotion dysregulation

Positive and meaningful connections with others are consistently associated with increased levels of happiness, self-esteem, fulfillment (Cast & Burke, 2002; Lakey, 2013) and, importantly, have been repeatedly shown to buffer the effects of stress (Chao, 2011). Indeed, individuals who engage in positive interpersonal relationships tend to report lower rates of depression (Lakey & Cronin, 2008), fewer posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms (Brewin, Andrews, & Valentine, 2000), and lower rates of

Participants

A total of 4006 primary care patients aged 18 years and older participated in the embrACE Study. From October 2014 to July 2015, participants were recruited from 11 primary care clinics in the greater Calgary, Alberta area. The embrACE Study was approved by the University of Calgary’s Human Research Ethics Board.

Procedure

Physicians at primary care clinics in Calgary, Alberta and surrounding areas were invited to participate in the study. The time spent recruiting patients at each participating clinic

Statistical analyses

All data met assumptions of multicollinearity, linearity, homoscedasticity, and normally distributed errors. Missing values analyses (e.g., Little’s MCAR test, t-tests) indicated that missing data were missing at random and therefore did not reflect selection bias. As such, list-wise deletion was used to handle all missing data. One-way ANOVAs were used to evaluate differences in responses to self-reported data as a function of survey modality (i.e., online vs. paper questionnaire). Differences

Descriptive data

The descriptive data for the sample is summarized in Table 1. Of the total sample (N = 3922), almost 70% of the sample (n = 2663; 69.1%) reported at least one type of ACE and almost one of every five participants reported four or more ACEs (n = 708; 18.1%). The most common ACE reported was growing up with a mentally ill household member (n = 1736; 44.3%) followed by household substance use (n = 1195; 30.5%). Additionally, 24.6% of the sample reported parental separation or divorce, 20.3% sexual

Discussion

Although ACEs have been widely examined as risk factors for poor intrapersonal outcomes such as mental and physical health problems, previous research has not adequately investigated the association between ACEs and interpersonal outcomes. The relatively few studies to evaluate the association between ACEs and interpersonal functioning were generally limited by narrow definitions of childhood adversity (e.g., evaluation of only sexual abuse) and related failures to address the effects of

Conflict of interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. This research did not involve animal participants.

Acknowledgment

This research was supported by a grant from the Palix Foundation awarded to Dobson and Pusch [RSO number: 1031803, 2015–2016].

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