Childhood Abuse and Aggression in Adolescent Girls Involved in Child Welfare: The Role of Depression and Posttraumatic Stress

Abstract

This study investigated the relationship between histories of childhood abuse and aggressive behaviors among adolescent girls involved in child welfare, and determined whether symptoms of post-traumatic stress and depression mediated this relationship. Participants were 237 girls ages 12–19 years. Overall, results indicated 89 % of the adolescents endorsed at least one aggressive behavior towards others. Specifically, 72.0 % engaged in physical aggression, 78.5 % engaged in non-physical aggression, and 51.5 % endorsed relational aggression. Greater severity of emotional and physical abuse were significantly associated with a higher frequency of aggressive behaviors. Sexual abuse was not significantly related to aggression. Post-traumatic stress and depression fully mediated the relationship between emotional abuse and aggression, controlling for race, service use, and living situation. The linkages between physical abuse and aggression were not mediated by either post-traumatic stress or depression. Findings suggest that among adolescent girls with histories of emotional abuse, post-traumatic stress and depression represent potential modifiable risk factors to target for reducing aggression.

Longitudinal Effects of Adolescent Abuse on Relationship Quality and Posttraumatic Stress Symptoms in Mother–Adolescent Dyads

“…Our first hypothesis that adolescents' lifetime sexual and emotional abuse reported at age 12 would be positively associated with greater PTSS at 12 was supported and in line with previous findings (Auslander et al, ; Hébert et al, ; Yoon et al, ). Contrary to our expectation, physical abuse was not associated with PTSS.…”

“…Research demonstrates that adolescents who are physically, sexually, and emotionally abused commonly develop PTSS (Auslander, et al, ; Finkelhor et al, ; Kolko et al, ; Lansford et al, ; Sugaya et al, ; Weierich & Nock, ; Yoon, Kobulsky, Yoon, & Kim, ). PTSS include dissociation, anger, irritability, depression, anxiety, and sleep disturbances (Briere, ; van der Kolk, ).…”

“…The contributions of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse on PTSS in at‐risk adolescents should, however, be interpreted with caution because only a few studies have controlled for the co‐occurrence of each form of abuse, which constrains the ability of scholars and clinicians to determine which forms of abuse are associated with PTSS. To date, researchers have most commonly tested each form of abuse in separate models (e.g., Auslander et al, ) or combined abuse types (e.g., Weierich & Nock, ), with only a few studies investigating differential effects among abuse types (e.g., Yoon et al, ).…”

The Mediation Role of Moral Personality Between Childhood Psychological Abuse and Cyberbullying Perpetration Attitudes of College Students

“…Research showed that the positive moral personality of college students were significantly negatively correlated with anti-social behaviors (e.g., violation, addiction, and attack tendencies; Zhang, 2012). In the developmental period of moral personality, as a childhood experience, childhood psychological abuse was closely related to individual personality characteristics (Gabalda et al, 2009;Martinotti et al, 2009;Conger et al, 2010;Auslander et al, 2016). Studies have shown that psychological abuse was negatively related to extroversion, and individuals who experienced more psychological abuse showed high levels of neuroticism, impulsion, and other negative personality tendencies (Li et al, 2017).…”

Self-reported aggressive and antisocial behaviors in Moroccan high school students

“…Our results also show that students reporting the experience of physical and/ or psychological abuse scored significantly higher in the self-reported measure of aggressive and antisocial traits, overt aggression and norm-breaking behavior, than those not reporting these negative experiences. These results may be explained by the "cycle of violence theory" (Widom, 1989a), which suggests that exposure to abuse in childhood increases the risk of engaging in violent criminal offenses or aggressive behavior in adolescence (Widom, 1989b), and by the fact that the experience of childhood abuse may be heavily involved in a developmental pathway leading to the possible onset of post-traumatic stress disorder and depression (Powers et al, 2015;Wielaard et al, 2018), consequently increasing future levels of aggressive and antisocial behaviors (Auslander et al, 2016;Kendra, Bell, & Guimond, 2012). However, the connection between childhood abuse and adolescent aggression has also been explained by social learning theory hypotheses suggesting that aggression may be a learned behavior through direct or observed violent interactions (Burton, Miller, & Shill, 2002).…”