Childhood maltreatment and suicide ideation: A possible mediation of social support

Abstract

BACKGROUND Existing literature suggests a positive link between childhood maltreatment (CM) and suicide ideation (SI). Nevertheless, whether social support significantly mediates this association remains unknown . AIM To investigate whether social support significantly mediates the association between CM and SI. METHODS In this cross-sectional study of 4732 adolescents from southwest China, we intended to discuss the association between CM and multiple types of SI. In addition, the mediation of major types of social support in this association was also investigated. A self-administrated questionnaire was used to collect the data. A series of multivariate logistic regression models were employed to estimate the association between different types of CM, social support, and SI. The possible mediation of social support in the association between CM and SI was assessed using the path model. RESULTS Based on the cutoffs for subscales of Childhood Trauma Questionnaire, 928 (19.61%), 1269 (26.82%), 595 (12.57%), 2337 (49.39%), and 3067 (64.81%) respondents reported physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, physical neglect, and emotional neglect, respectively. Among all the social sources , parental support presented as a significant mediator in the association between emotional maltreatment, both abuse and neglect, and all three types of SI: 1-wk, 1-year, and lifetime. Parental social support mediated 5.31% and 29.23%, 4.80% and 24.50%, and 7.04% and 44.42% of the overall emotional abuse-SI and emotional neglect-SI associations, respectively. CONCLUSION Our findings suggest that improving parental social support might be effective in preventing suicidal risk related to childhood emotional maltreatment in adolescents.

Specific effects of five subtypes of childhood maltreatment on suicide behaviours in Chinese adolescents: the moderating effect of sex and residence

“…The most widely used assessment of five childhood maltreatment subtypes is the CTQ-SF (Bernstein et al, 2003). However, some scholars treat subtypes of childhood maltreatment as five dichotomous variables (Ahouanse et al, 2022;Chen et al, 2021b;Xie et al, 2018), while others treat them as five continuous variables (Gong et al, 2020;Guo et al, 2018), which could result in heterogeneity across the existing studies.…”

“…However, some scholars treat subtypes of childhood maltreatment as five dichotomous variables (Ahouanse et al. , 2022 ; Chen et al. , 2021b ; Xie et al.…”

“…Thus, emotional abuse could be a strong predictor of internal psychopathology development and might disturb the psychosocial well-being during childhood and adolescence (Ahouanse et al. , 2022 ).…”

Childhood maltreatment and suicidal ideation in Chinese children and adolescents: the mediating role of mindfulness

“…[26], these factors are all direct or indirect relate to SI [3,4]. On the other hand, CM victims tend to develop social isolation and report reduced social support, both of them are associated with increased risk of suicide [27,28]. Moreover, suicide interpersonal theory suggests that people who had experienced negative events, such as CM, may develop a pain-adapted feeling, have a diminished fear of selfharm, and eventually lead to increased suicide related behaviors [29].…”

Clinical characteristics of psychotic disorders in patients with childhood trauma

“…[9][10][11][12] Moreover, childhood trauma, especially physical and sexual abuse, is an important factor in the development of psychotic disorders in adulthood. [13][14][15][16][17][18] According to the literature, the risk of developing psychosis is 2 to 3 times higher in people who have experienced childhood trauma than in people who have not. [19,20] In accordance with this, numerous studies have established a high frequency of childhood trauma in people with schizophrenia.…”