The impact of adolescent profiles of posttraumatic stress, emotion regulation, and disorganized attachment on posttraumatic growth and psychiatric symptoms: Academic stress and egocentrism as covariates.

Abstract

Objective: The present study aimed to examine the profile patterns of co-occurring posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), cognitive emotion regulation (CER), and disorganized attachment in traumatized adolescents. It also aimed to examine whether these adolescents with different profiles would differ in posttraumatic growth (PTG) and comorbid psychiatric symptoms after controlling for academic stress and egocentrism.

Method: Nine hundred and forty-nine (N = 949) adolescents were recruited from two secondary schools in China. They completed measures on PTSD, comorbid psychiatric symptoms, PTG, CER, disorganized attachment, and covariates of egocentrism and academic stress.

Results: Latent profile analysis identified a four-class model as the optimal solution: low trauma group (Class 1), adaptive copers (Class 2), moderate trauma group (Class 3), and high trauma group (Class 4). After controlling for demographics and levels of egocentrism and academic stress, Class 4 had more severe comorbid psychiatric symptoms than the other three classes. Class 3 had higher levels of comorbid psychiatric symptoms than Class 2 and Class 1, while these latter two were comparable in comorbid psychiatric symptoms. Conversely, Class 4 students had lower levels of PTG than individuals in the other three classes. Class 3 had similar levels of PTG to Class 1, and these two classes reported lower levels of PTG than Class 2.

Conclusions: Chinese adolescents may experience both negative and positive changes after stressful events. The extent of these psychological outcomes could vary depending on the adolescents' previous trauma experiences, emotion regulation, and attachment qualities. Implications for clinical practice were discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).