Interactive effects of childhood maltreatment and tonic respiratory sinus arrhythmia on young adults’ depressive symptoms

Abstract

The goal of the current study was to investigate the moderating effect of tonic respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) in the relation between childhood maltreatment and depression symptoms among young adults. A total of 98 participants (70 women) aged 17-22 years completed questionnaires on childhood maltreatment and depressive symptoms. RSA data were obtained during a resting condition in the laboratory.Results indicated that childhood maltreatment interacted with tonic RSA to predict depressive symptoms, even after controlling for age and body mass index (BMI) of each participant. Specifically, higher levels of childhood maltreatment were associated with higher levels of depressive symptoms, but only among young adults who exhibited lower tonic RSA. The results indicated that the association between childhood maltreatment and depressive symptoms depends on young adults' physiological functioning/flexibility. Findings suggest that consideration of external environmental factors in combination with internal physiological factors is critical to understand young adults' mental health.

Watching with Argus eyes: Characterization of emotional and physiological responding in adults exposed to childhood maltreatment and/or recent adversity

“…Here we examined the association of childhood and recent adversity on general reactivity and affect modulation in SCR and EMG startle responding in an affective startle modulation paradigm in 685 mentally healthy individuals. We replicated our previous findings (Kuhn et al, 2016) of higher trait anxiety and depression levels (Mirman et al, 2021;Zhang et al, 2021) in individuals exposed to childhood or recent adversity. Furthermore, we explored adversity-type specific effects as distinct consequences of exposure to threat vs. deprivation have been suggested (McLaughlin et al, 2014) as well as the agreement between two key questionnaires for the assessment of childhood maltreatment (i.e., CTQ and KERF/MACE).…”

Loneliness and Maladjustment in Young Adults: The Protective Effects of High Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia and Sleep Quality

“…Furthermore, at high levels of loneliness young adults characterized by this RSA/sleep pattern had the lowest anxiety and depressive symptoms and highest positive affect/well-being relative to the sample, with estimated means ranging from a difference of .40-1.24 SDs. These findings are consistent with prior work examining either RSA or sleep as moderators of risk of social stress (El-Sheikh et al, 2022;Tu et al, 2015;Xing et al, 2019;Zhang et al, 2021) and may indicate that in the context of loneliness, healthy functioning is required across more than one bioregulatory system (e.g., RSA and sleep), to see protection. High resting RSA and high sleep quality both underlie healthy emotion regulation (Beauchaine, 2015;Palmer & Alfano, 2017), which may support coping with the arousal and negative emotions elicited by loneliness and protect against maladjustment outcomes.…”

“…For example, more symptoms of social phobia have been associated with more physical health symptoms among college students with low, but not high resting RSA (Xing et al, 2019). Similarly, Zhang et al (2021) found that higher levels of childhood maltreatment were associated more depressive symptoms among young adults with low resting RSA, whereas those with high RSA were protected. Although to our knowledge such relations have not been examined in the context of loneliness, these findings demonstrate the protective effects of high RSA in contexts of stress.…”