The Mediating Role Of The Emotion Regulation Difficulties On The Relationship Between Childhood Traumas, Post Traumatic Stress Symptoms And Depression

Abstract

Objective: The objective of this study was to determine whether the emotion regulation difficulties mediate the relationship between childhood psychological trauma and the symptoms of post traumatic stress and depressive symptoms. Method: The sample consist of 300 women whose age between 18 and 60. Participants recruited from Adana, Mersin and Diyarbakir. Individuals were asked to complete a number of questionnaires includingDemographic Information Form, Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ), Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS), Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Checklist-Civillian Version (PCL - C) and Beck Depression Inventory (BDI). In this study the data was analyzed with Structural Equational Model (SEM) using LISREL 8.51 Results: Correlational analyses showed that all types of child maltreatment were uniformly associated with emotion dysregulation dimensions, and dimensions of emotion dysregulation were strongly related to depression and post traumatic stress symptoms. According to findings of this study, factor loading of emotional abuse observed variable; is the highest one among the factor loadings of maltreatment types. Structural equation modeling analyses revealed that there is a partialmediator role of emotion regulation difficulties in the relation between childhood traumatic experiences and the symptoms of post traumatic stress and depression. Conclusion: This study put forward that emotion regulation is a significant factor regarding depressive and post traumatic stress symptoms which related to maltreatment in childhood. Therefore results show that training emotional regulation skills could be useful in dealing with post traumatic and depressive symptoms.