FROM PREOCCUPIED ATTACHMENT TO DEPRESSION: SERIAL MEDIATION MODEL EFFECTS ON A SAMPLE OF WOMEN Existing studies have confirmed the existence of a relation between depressive symptoms and insecure attachment, an undeveloped ability to mentalize, social anxiety and rumination, as well as their increasingly more frequent presence in the population of women. However, none of the studies have analyzed the mutual relations between the aforementioned phenomena. In this study we tested a multiple serial mediation model in which a preoccupied attachment style has an effect on depressive symptoms among women, mediated by the ability to mentalize one’s own state of mind, social anxiety and a tendency towards rumination, successively, in that order. The research was carried out on a geographical cluster sample and included 1258 working-age adults, respondents from 37 urban and rural locations, 20 administrative districts of Serbia, from which a sample of women was extracted (N= 791). The Relationships Questionnaire – RQ (Bartholomew and Horowitz, 1991), the Mentalization Scale – MentS (Dimitrijević et al., 2015), the Scale of Social Anxiety (Tovilović, 2004) and the Ruminative Thought Style Questionnaire – RTSQ; Brinker and Dozois, 2009) were all used in the study. The results have indicated that there is a significant specific indirect effect of the preoccupied attachment style on depression mediated by all three mediators sequentially (estimated indirect effect = .004, boot-strapped 95% CI = .002 - .007), suggesting that the preoccupied attachment style has an effect on depression by leading to a decrease in the ability to mentalize one’s own state of mind, which increases social anxiety, in turn leading to an increase in rumination, which ultimately leads to depression. These findings could be of importance for the treatment of a specific group of female patients with a preoccupied attachment style who suffer from depression.
The paper focuses on the relationship between the dimensions of affective attachment and a three-dimensional model of coping strategies (problem-focused coping, emotion-focused coping and avoidance: distraction and social diversion). To analyze this problem, the Coping in Stressful Situations questionnaire (CISS, Endler & Parker, 1990) along with the Questionnaire for Attachment Assessment (UPIPAV -R, Hanak, 2004; Hanak 2011) was used on a sample of 152 students of the Faculty of Philosophy.The results indicate the existence of significant correlations between coping strategies and the dimensions of attachment. Specifically, there is a negative correlation between problem-focused coping and unresolved family trauma, fear of using an outside secure base and a negative working model of self, while there is a positive correlation with the ability to mentalize. There is a positive correlation between emotion-focused coping and distraction strategies, and fear of using an outside secure base, a negative working model of self and negative working model of others, and poor anger management where there is a positive correlation between emotion-focused coping and unresolved family trauma. Finally, there is a negative correlation between social diversion and unresolved trauma, and a negative working model of self and a positive one between fear of using an outside secure base. The results of the regression analysis indicate that the aforementioned dimensions of affective attachment, as predictors explain 21,1% of the variance of problem-focused coping, 13,3% of the variance of the distraction strategy, 24,6% of the variance of the strategy of social diversion, and as much as 49,9% of the variance of emotion-focused coping.Even though drawing any conclusions requires a greater sample, we could say that the participants are more prone to maladaptive coping if they display more pronounced dimensions of affective attachment typical of insecure patterns of attachment (a negative working model of self and a negative working model of others, unresolved family trauma, fear of using an outside secure base and poor anger management).
There is a lack of studies evaluating temperament as a predictor of one’s mentalizing capacity and its moderating role in the relationship between mentalization in parents and their offspring. So, the aim of this study is to examine whether certain types of children’s temperament and their parents’ mentalizing capacity can predict children’s mentalizing capacity and whether children’s temperament is a moderator in the context of parent‐child relationship. The sample consisted of 388 participants, i.e., 194 dyads of primary caregivers and their adult children. In order to operationalize the mentalizing capacity (of both parents and their adult children), we used The Reflective Functioning Questionnaire (Fonagy et al., 2017). Different types of temperament in children were measured using the Temperament Evaluation of Memphis, Pisa, Paris and San Diego – auto‐questionnaire – short version (Akiskal, Mendlowicz, Jean‐Louis et al., J Affect Disord, 85, 45–52, 2005). The results indicate that parents’ mentalizing capacity is a significant predictor of this competence in their children. Anxious and depressive temperaments directly predict higher scores on certainty about mental states, while hyperthymic temperament is a negative predictor of a good mentalizing ability. Furthermore, certain temperament types, irritable and hyperthymic, are statistically significant moderators in the relationship between the individual’s and the parent’s mentalizing capacity. The results suggest the possibility that hyperthymic temperament in children can alleviate the negative consequences of low mentalizing capacity of parents on mentalizing capacity of their children. Finally, the results suggest that positive relationship between high mentalizing capacity of parents and children is especially distinctive for children with irritable temperament.
This study provides initial insights on the use of the Attachment Q-sort (AQS) for assessing young children's attachment quality in
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