Associations between threat and deprivation experiences and adolescent internalizing and externalizing symptoms: The roles of emotion regulation and identity problems

Abstract

Background: Childhood adversity, which can be conceptualized as dimensions of threat versus deprivation, is a robust risk factor for internalizing and externalizing symptoms. Emotion regulation difficulties and identity problems may be two explanatory variables by which threat and deprivation are linked to internalizing and externalizing psychopathology.

Objective: The present study tested whether emotion regulation difficulties and identity problems are significant mediators in associations between childhood experiences of threat and deprivation and adolescent internalizing and externalizing symptoms.

Participants and setting: 125 adolescents (M = 15.33 years old, 77.6 % female) recruited from an inpatient psychiatric hospital in the Southwestern United States. All consecutive admissions to the unit were approached for participation if eligible.

Methods: This was a cross-sectional observational study. Participants completed questionnaire measures at inpatient admission including the Youth Self Report, the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire, the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale, and the Assessment of Identity Development in Adolescence. Four sequential mediation models were tested.

Results: Higher levels of emotion regulation difficulties and identity problems fully explained associations between threat (B = 0.13, 95 % CI = 0.05, 0.25) and deprivation (B = 0.23, 95 % CI = 0.11, 0.38) and adolescent internalizing symptoms. However, these indirect effects were not observed in models examining externalizing symptoms. There was a direct association between deprivation and externalizing symptoms (B = 0.64, p < 0.001), but threat and externalizing symptoms were not indirectly or directly associated.

Conclusions: Emotion regulation difficulties and identity problems may be plausible mechanisms linking threat and deprivation experiences with later internalizing symptoms, but different associations were observed between threat and deprivation and externalizing symptoms.

Keywords: Adolescence; Childhood adversity; Difficulties in emotion regulation; Emotion dysregulation; Identity development; Psychopathology.