Effect of childhood maltreatment on cognitive function and its relationship with personality development and social coping style in major depression disorder patients: A latent class model and network analysis

Xiao Wang; Xinrong Li; Juan Zhao; Xinzhe Du; Junxia Li; Wentao Zhao; Jing Li; Sha Liu; Yong Xu

doi:10.3389/fpsyt.2023.748857

Effect of childhood maltreatment on cognitive function and its relationship with personality development and social coping style in major depression disorder patients: A latent class model and network analysis

Front Psychiatry. 2023 Jan 20:14:748857. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2023.748857. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Xiao Wang^{1

2}, Xinrong Li^{1

2}, Juan Zhao¹, Xinzhe Du^{1

2}, Junxia Li^{1

2}, Wentao Zhao^{1

2}, Jing Li^{1

2}, Sha Liu^{1

2}, Yong Xu³

Affiliations

¹ Shanxi Key Laboratory of Artificial Intelligence Assisted Diagnosis and Treatment for Mental Disorder, First Hospital of Shanxi Medical University, Taiyuan, Shanxi, China.
² Department of Psychiatry, First Hospital/First Clinical Medical College of Shanxi Medical University, Taiyuan, Shanxi, China.
³ Department of Psychiatry, Taiyuan Central Hospital of Shanxi Medical University, Taiyuan, Shanxi, China.

Abstract

Study objectives: The study aimed to (1) analyze the interrelationships among different types of childhood adversity, diverse personality dimensions, and individual coping style integratively among major depressive disorder (MDD) patients and healthy participants using a network approach; (2) explore the latent class of child maltreatment (CM) and its relationship with cognitive function.

Methods: Data were collected from the Objective Diagnostic Markers and Personalized Intervention in MDD Patients (ODMPIM) study, including 1,629 Chinese participants. Using the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire to assess CM, the Simplified Coping Style Questionnaire to measure individual coping style, Eysenck Personality Questionnaire Revised-Short Form for personality characters, and a series of neurocognitive tests, including seven tests with 18 subtests for cognitive assessments. We used the "Network Module" in Jeffreys's Amazing Statistics Program (JASP) and R package for network analysis. A latent class analysis was performed with SAS9.4.

Results: Child maltreatment was more common in MDD patients than in healthy controls, except for emotional abuse. Network analysis showed that emotional abuse, emotional neglect, physical abuse, and physical neglect formed quadrangle connections. Personality dimensions were associated with physical neglect and emotional abuse. All types of CM (excluding sex abuse) showed an association with coping style. Emotional neglect showed the highest centrality measures. Physical neglect had a high level of closeness. To a concerning strength, emotional and physical neglect showed the highest levels. The structure of the networks is variant between groups (M = 0.28, P = 0.04). Latent class analysis (LCA) revealed that three classes provided the best fit statistics. Neglect and abuse classes tended to perform more poorly on the five cognitive domains.

Conclusion: This study provided insights on multi-type of CM. Neglect played an important role in different routes through the relation between CM with personality traits and social coping style. However, neglect has often been ignored in previous studies and should receive more public attention.

Keywords: childhood maltreatment; cognitive function; latent class analysis; network analysis; personality characters.

Grants and funding

This study was supported by grants from the National Key Basic Research Program of China (973 Program) (No. 2013CB531305), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.82201710), and Ph.D. Research Startup Foundation of Shanxi Province (No. SD1927).