The relationship between childhood trauma and depressive symptom among Zhuang adolescents: Mediating and moderating effects of cognitive emotion regulation strategies

Wenwen Yin; Yuli Pan; Linhua Zhou; Qiaoyue Wei; Shengjie Zhang; Hong Hu; Qinghong Lin; Shuibo Pan; Chenyangzi Dai; Junduan Wu

doi:10.3389/fpsyt.2022.994065

The relationship between childhood trauma and depressive symptom among Zhuang adolescents: Mediating and moderating effects of cognitive emotion regulation strategies

Front Psychiatry. 2022 Sep 6:13:994065. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2022.994065. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Wenwen Yin¹, Yuli Pan², Linhua Zhou¹, Qiaoyue Wei¹, Shengjie Zhang³, Hong Hu⁴, Qinghong Lin¹, Shuibo Pan¹, Chenyangzi Dai¹, Junduan Wu^{1

5}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Psychology, School of Public Health, Guangxi Medical University, Nanning, China.
² Department of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Nanning, China.
³ Department of Graduate Management, Guangxi Medical University Cancer Hospital, Nanning, China.
⁴ Department of Medical Institution, Guangxi Nanning Fifth People's Hospital, Nanning, China.
⁵ Department of School of Public Health, Guangxi Medical College, Nanning, China.

Abstract

Background: Not all adolescents who have endured childhood trauma will develop depressive symptom, nor will they all experience the same level of depressive symptom. According to previous research, cognitive emotion regulation strategies may explain a portion of the variance. Observe the connection between childhood trauma and depressive symptom and investigate whether cognitive emotion regulation strategies mediate or moderate this association.

Methods: In October 2019, a cross-sectional study measuring childhood trauma, cognitive emotion regulation strategies, and depressive symptom among Zhuang adolescents was done in one senior high school and two junior highs in Chongzuo, Guangxi, China, using a self-report questionnaire. To examine the hypothesis of mediating and moderating effects, SPSS PROCESS was utilized.

Results: In this study, there was a positive relationship between childhood trauma and depressive symptom, whereas there were positive correlations between expressive suppression and childhood trauma and depressive symptom (r = 0.380, 0.246, and 0.089, respectively, p < 0.01). The 5,000-sample bootstrap procedure revealed that the indirect relationship between the independent variable (childhood trauma or emotional abuse) and the dependent variable (depressive symptom) was statistically significant (β = 0.0154 95% CI: 0.0019, 0.0165, β = 0.0442 95% CI: 0.0008, 0.0117). The statistical significance of the interaction effect enhanced the R-square value of the moderating effect when the independent variable was the total childhood trauma score (ΔR2 = 0.0044, 0.0089).

Conclusions: Our findings corroborated the conclusion of prior research that cognitive emotion regulation strategies mediate and moderate the development of depressive symptom. Although we demonstrate that cognitive emotion regulation strategies play a mediating and moderating role in the relationships between childhood trauma and depressive symptom, the mediating effects on the relationships between the other types of childhood traumas, including physical abuse and neglect, sexual abuse, emotional neglect, and depressive symptom, did not emerge.

Keywords: childhood trauma; depression; emotional abuse in childhood; expressive suppression; the Zhuang adolescents.