Maladaptive personality traits may link childhood trauma history to current internalizing symptoms

Abstract

Research supports a strong relationship between childhood maltreatment and internalizing psychopathology (e.g., anxiety and depression), and features of personality are assumed to explain some of this relationship. In this study, we proposed a model in which maladaptive traits mediate the effect of childhood trauma history on internalizing symptoms in adult individuals. A mixed sample (N = 462) composed of 142 psychiatric patients and 320 community-dwelling individuals completed the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ), the Personality Inventory for DSM-5 (PID-5), and the Symptom Checklist (SCL-27) for internalizing psychopathology. The effect of childhood traumas explained 34% of the variance in internalizing symptoms while controlling for the influence of age and gender. The traits accounted for 78% of this effect, which was predominantly exerted through the domains of Negative Affectivity, Detachment, and Psychoticism, and specifically through the facets of Depressivity, Suspiciousness, Anxiousness, Perceptual Dysregulation, and Distractibility. This finding provides preliminary support for the proposed model indicating that the aforementioned maladaptive trait domains potentially function as mediating links by which childhood traumas are translated into internalizing symptoms in adulthood. However, these findings must be interpreted with caution due to the cross-sectional and retrospective mono-method design of this study. Clinical implications are discussed in relation to transdiagnostic treatment and the potential value of specifying trait domain specifiers in ICD-11 and DSM-5 models of personality disorders.

Psychometric properties of the Hungarian Childhood Trauma Questionnaire Short Form and its validity in patients with adult Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder or Borderline Personality Disorder

“…Each CTQ subscale showed signi cant positive correlations, from acceptable to moderate, with each analysed subscale of PID-5, indicative of good convergent validity. These results are in line with ndings of recent studies in this eld showing that early life traumatization in uences personality structure and pathology, which can mediate towards other symptom domains, e.g., dissociation or suicidal behaviour (25,66).…”

“…Correlation analyses were carried out between H-CTQ-SF subscales, and separately, between H-CTQ-SF subscales and PID-5 domain scores. The domains of the PID-5 used for correlation analyses were chosen based on clinical relevance, and recent studies (25,66,67).…”

“…The PID-5, which has been developed according to the AMPD, is a personality questionnaire rather, than an instrument for the assessment of traumatization per se. However, recent studies reported close associations between several PID-5 subscales (e.g., anxiousness, depressivity, suspiciousness, hostility, negative affectivity, detachment) and early traumatization (25,66,67).…”

“…Early life traumatization has also been reported to in uence personality development and adult personality structure, affecting several personality domains. Negative affectivity, detachment, and psychoticism have been shown to correlate with early traumatization, and mediate between childhood adversities and internalizing symptoms (25). These ndings represent the basis of the alternative model for personality disorders (AMPD) in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 5th edition (DSM-5) Section III (26), and the Personality Inventory for DSM-5 (PID-5) (27,28).…”

Pathological personality explains individual differences in global emotion dysregulation within the pathway between child maltreatment and severe depressive symptoms.

“…The focus on depressive symptoms as an outcome variable is due to its transdiagnostic relevance across different mood disorders (e.g., common symptom in depression and bipolar disorder). Moreover, the present study aimed to test a serial mediation model based on current evidence where child maltreatment is linked to maladaptive personality traits (Bach et al, 2022), and psychopathic traits are linked to global emotion dysregulation (Garofalo et al, 2020). Therefore, we hypothesized that (a) child maltreatment, maladaptive personality traits, and global emotion dysregulation will be positively associated with depressive symptoms; and (b) maladaptive personality traits (specifically, negative affectivity, detachment, and psychoticism) and global emotion dysregulation will serially mediate the relationship between child maltreatment and depressive symptoms in patients with mood disorders.…”