Impulsivity and resilience help explain how childhood trauma affects coping in youth with depression

A study of youths with depression in China found that resilience and impulsivity may mediate the relationship between childhood maltreatment and coping style. However, impulsivity did not play a mediating role among healthy participants. The study was published in Scientific Reports.

Depression is a common and serious mental health disorder characterized by persistent feelings of sadness, hopelessness, and a loss of interest or pleasure in previously enjoyable activities. It can affect individuals at any point in life, with symptoms that vary in severity and often impair daily functioning and overall well-being.

There are several types of depressive disorders. Two of the most prominent are major depressive disorder and bipolar disorder. Major depressive disorder involves episodes of severe depressive symptoms lasting at least two weeks, significantly disrupting daily life. Bipolar disorder, in contrast, is marked by mood swings that alternate between emotional highs (mania or hypomania) and lows (depression), leading to substantial fluctuations in mood, energy, and activity levels.

Study author Jiawei Zhou and her colleagues aimed to examine how childhood maltreatment influences coping styles in youth diagnosed with major depressive disorder or bipolar disorder, and how this relationship compares to that observed in healthy individuals. Childhood maltreatment includes a range of adverse experiences that can have lasting impacts on development and mental health, such as emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional neglect, and physical neglect.

Emotional abuse includes behaviors like verbal insults and constant criticism that undermine a child’s self-esteem. Physical abuse involves causing bodily harm, such as through hitting or burning. Sexual abuse refers to involving a child in sexual acts that they cannot understand or consent to, such as molestation or exploitation. Emotional neglect occurs when a child’s emotional needs are consistently ignored, while physical neglect refers to a failure to provide basic necessities like food, shelter, and medical care.

The study included 196 participants with major depressive disorder, 81 with bipolar disorder, and 98 healthy individuals. The average age of participants with depression was approximately 19 years, while the healthy participants had an average age of 21. Participants ranged in age from 16 to 25 years and were predominantly female. All participants were recruited from the outpatient psychiatric department of the Second Xiangya Hospital at Central South University in Changsha, China.

Participants completed several psychological assessments: the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire – Short Form (to measure childhood maltreatment), the Beck Depression Inventory (to assess depressive symptoms), the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (to measure resilience), the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale-11 (to assess impulsivity), and the Simplified Coping Style Questionnaire (to evaluate coping strategies).

The findings revealed that individuals with more severe childhood maltreatment experiences tended to report lower resilience, higher impulsivity, and less positive coping styles. This pattern was observed across all three groups. The researchers tested a statistical model suggesting that childhood maltreatment lowers resilience, which in turn increases impulsivity, which then negatively affects coping style. The data supported this proposed pathway, but also indicated that direct relationships exist between these variables.

When the model was analyzed separately for each group, it was fully supported among participants with major depressive disorder. In the bipolar disorder group, the model was also supported, although the effect of childhood maltreatment on coping style was entirely indirect—operating through resilience and impulsivity. Among healthy individuals, resilience was linked to more positive coping strategies, and childhood maltreatment was indirectly related to coping style through its negative effect on resilience. However, the direct link between impulsivity and coping style was not observed in this group.

“The study highlights that childhood maltreatment is directly related to coping styles in youths with depression and indirectly affects them through resilience and impulsivity. These findings suggest that improving resilience and managing impulsivity could enhance positive coping styles in this population,” the study authors concluded.

The study sheds light on the links between coping styles and childhood maltreatment experiences. However, it should be noted that the design of the study does not allow any definitive causal inferences to be derived from the results. The models proposed in the study are possible, not verified to be true as there may be other models of relationships between studied factors that are also possible.

The paper “Childhood maltreatment influences coping in youths with major depression and bipolar depression through resilience and impulsivity” was authored by Jiawei Zhou, Zheng Zhang, Sihong Li, Hui Chen, Xianliang Chen, HuajiaTang, and Jiansong Zhou.