Journal of Child & Adolescent Trauma最新文献

Purpose: Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a pervasive problem associated with a plethora of negative outcomes, including depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and chronic illness. Prior research has identified adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) as an important antecedent to IPV perpetration, and various mechanisms have since been examined to explain this association, including attachment. The purpose of this research is to investigate the mediating role of insecure adult romantic attachment in the relationship between ACEs and IPV perpetration, while also examining group differences among men and women.

Methods: The current study included a cross-sectional sample of 395 young adults between the ages of 18 and 24 (M_age = 19.1; 64% cisgender female; 54% White). We fit structural equation models to investigate the relationship between ACEs and IPV perpetration and the mediating role of attachment insecurity.

Results: In women, part of the relationship between ACEs and IPV perpetration is mediated by attachment anxiety. In men, attachment anxiety plays a mediating role despite no total effect of ACEs on IPV perpetration. Attachment avoidance did not mediate the association between ACEs and IPV in men or women.

Conclusions: Attachment anxiety may play a role in the intergenerational transmission of violence. These findings can be used by clinicians and practitioners to prevent the development of an anxious attachment orientation or target anxious attachment in adults.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s40653-025-00766-2.

Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) are widely recognized as prominent risk factors for negative psychosocial outcomes. Despite the plethora of literature on ACEs, comparatively little research has investigated ACEs as a potential risk factor for eventual trafficking. Instead, the greater part of the literature views experiences of human trafficking as a precipitant of adversity. The present paper reviews the extant literature investigating ACEs as risk factors for human trafficking. PRISMA guidelines were used to complete a comprehensive literature review across four databases (Pubmed, PsycINFO, EMBASE, and MEDLINE) which assessed the relationship between individual ACEs and human trafficking risk. Study findings are summarized, and studies' operational definitions for human trafficking status and ACEs were highlighted. Out of a total of 49 results, six studies met the inclusion criteria for the present review. While results vary between individual studies, trends in study findings indicate that the presence of ACEs leads to risk for eventual trafficking status. Experiences of sexual abuse, physical abuse, and physical neglect in particular were prominently identified as risk factors for human trafficking. Methodological limitations identified across studies, and implications for practice, policy, and future research are discussed.

Childhood traumatic experiences have long-term negative consequences for individual mental and physical well-being. Specifically, depression has proven to be a common consequence of previous trauma in adolescents. Furthermore, the course of depressive symptoms is worse in individuals with a traumatic history. Resilience may mitigate the impact of different types of trauma on depressive symptoms, but there is less information about these associations longitudinally. We therefore examined the effect of childhood trauma, including physical and emotional neglect and abuse, on the change in depressive symptoms over a six-month follow-up in outpatient adolescents, as well as the role of resilience in this association. We used a transdiagnostic approach by examining the depressive symptoms, resilience, and childhood traumatization, regardless of the psychiatric diagnosis, in a naturalistic study setting. Resilience measured with the Brief Resilience Scale (BRS), childhood adversities and trauma experiences, including emotional neglect, emotional abuse, physical neglect, physical abuse, and sexual abuse, measured with the Trauma and Distress Scale (TADS), and depressive symptoms measured with the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-IA) were self-evaluated at baseline and on six-month follow-up by 297 adolescent participants in a natural study setting. Paired sample t-tests were conducted to measure the change in BDI scores during the follow-up. Mediation and moderation analysis with resilience was performed to investigate the effect of resilience on the association between trauma subtypes and the change in depressive symptoms during the follow-up. Childhood adversities and trauma experiences associated with resilience, the strongest associations being with emotional abuse, emotional neglect, and physical neglect, as well as with the alleviation of depressive symptoms during the follow-up, except for sexual abuse. The latter effect was mediated by resilience, even after adjustment for several possible confounding factors. Only sexual abuse did not associate with the change in depressive symptoms through resilience. No moderating effect of resilience was observed on the association between trauma or any trauma subtype and the alleviation of depressive symptoms. The broad assessment of childhood traumatic experiences, including emotional neglect, emotional abuse, physical neglect, and physical abuse, together with resilience in relation to depressive symptoms, regardless the psychiatric diagnosis, followed by interventions focused on resilience enhancement is suggested to alleviate depression in outpatient adolescents with such experiences of trauma.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s40653-025-00728-8.

The scientific literature suggests that young people involved in street gangs are likely to have experienced a number of potentially traumatic events during childhood and adolescence. However, there is little research on how such youth see these experiences and what repercussions they may have. The present study uses the developmental model of moral injury proposed by Kidwell and Kerig (2023) to explore the adverse traumatic experiences reported by young people involved in street gangs and the consequences these experiences have on their lives, based on an inductive analysis of statements made in interviews with eight adolescents and young adults who were or had been involved in street gangs. Our findings show that these individuals suffered moral injuries early in childhood and that such injuries reoccurred in connection with gang involvement. The study uses the concept of trauma bonding to propose an enhancement to Kidwell and Kerig's model, providing a better understanding of the experiences of youth who suffer moral injury while involved in street gangs.

One of the challenges in the intervention with adolescents placed in residential care centers is to provide a stable placement. Interventions must take maltreatment experiences into account as these experiences could increase behavioral problems, such as delinquent behaviors and runaways, and possibly lead to more instability/change in placements. The current study explores whether the association between type of maltreatment (emotional, physical or sexual abuse, emotional or physical neglect) and placement instability (number of moves and environments) can be explained by the frequency of runaways and the presence of involvement with the juvenile justice system. Mediation models using self-reported and administrative data from 175 males aged 15 to 17 years placed in a residential care center under the Youth Protection Act were tested via Structural Equation Modeling. Results indicate that the association between emotional neglect severity and placement instability is explained by runaway. Interventions with adolescents presenting a history of emotional neglect, should focus on preventing runaways to reduce placement instability.

Trauma-informed care has received increased attention in the scientific literature and clinical practice (Becker-Blease, 2017; Purtle, 2020; Stokes et al., 2024); however, evaluation of the implementation and effectiveness of these efforts is limited (Purtle, 2020). This study addresses this gap by exploring the psychometric properties of the Modularized Think Trauma Evaluation Questionnaires (M-TTEQs). The M-TTEQs were developed to assess frontline residential staffs' trauma-informed knowledge and attitudes before and after receiving Think Trauma, a National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN) training curriculum that consists of 4 discrete modules. This paper utilizes data from 1807 staff members at 20 Illinois child welfare residential care facilities who received Think Trauma training between 2020 and 2024. The internal consistency of M-TTEQs was assessed using Cronbach's alpha, with results indicating strong internal consistency across all pre- and post-surveys (α values between 0.88 and 0.95), supporting the reliability of the measures. A subset of 155 participants who completed all 4 pre-training, and 153 participants who completed all 4 post-training M-TTEQs were included in confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) assessing the measures' construct validity. CFA models demonstrated acceptable fit indices, indicating that the surveys measured the intended constructs for each module. Despite these acceptable psychometric properties, some items showed weaker factor loadings, particularly reverse-worded questions, suggesting the need for further refinement. This study contributes to the trauma-informed care literature by providing a tool with acceptable reliability and construct validity for assessing knowledge and attitude change related to the Think Trauma training curriculum.

Background: Adolescent refugees may be uniquely impacted by potential traumatic experiences due to their incomplete bio-psychosocial and cognitive development, dependence, and underdeveloped coping skills. Despite this vulnerability, there is a lack of clarity in the literature on the coping strategies adolescent refugees employ following trauma exposure and how these strategies are associated with their adjustment. The objective of this scoping review was to systematically identify the types of coping strategies used by adolescent refugees and examine the associations between trauma exposure and coping mechanisms.

Methods: A comprehensive search of four electronic databases (Ebsco Host, PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science) was conducted to identify relevant peer-reviewed articles. Inclusion criteria for studies were: 1) focused on the relationship between trauma and coping strategies was explicitly examined and discussed; 2) trauma was the primary predictor variable and the main focus of the study; 3) coping strategies were analyzed as outcome variables; 4) focused on adolescent refugees or asylum seekers aged 12-18 years as participants, including all genders; 5) articles were published in peer-reviewed journals between January 1, 2001, and June 20, 2021; 6) articles were written in English.

Results: A total of 389 articles were identified as potentially relevant for the study, 6 articles were included in this scoping review. In total, 1694 participants were included across the included studies. Five included studies utilised a cross-sectional research design, and one study employed a case study. The review found that adolescent refugees mostly employed emotion-focused, avoidant and social support/ support-seeking coping strategies among the participants of the included studies. The majority of the included studies showed that traumatic experiences are more strongly associated with emotion-focused, avoidant and social support coping strategies than active and problem-focused strategies across diverse adolescent refugee populations. Avoidant-coping strategy was associated with maladjustment in young refugees.

Conclusions: This scoping review suggests that future efforts should focus on equipping adolescent refugees with problem-solving and active coping strategies while addressing their psychosocial, cultural, and educational challenges to foster resilience and positive adjustment.

The current study examined childhood trauma, mindfulness, and interpersonal outcomes of attachment anxiety (fear of rejection in close relationships) and horizontal collectivism (HC; valuing equality and group harmony) using a diverse sample of university students. The 84 study participants completed the Early Trauma Inventory Short Form Revised, the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire, Experiences in Close Relationships Scale - Revised, and the Cultural Orientation Scale. In accordance with prior findings, mindfulness significantly mediated the relationship between childhood trauma and attachment anxiety (B = .06, [.03, .10]), highlighting the effects of childhood trauma on a process of mistrust in close relationships. While mindfulness did not mediate the relationship between childhood trauma and HC, the results indicated that acting with awareness, which is an aspect of mindfulness, significantly mediated the relationship between childhood trauma and HC (B = -.14, [-.28, -.03]). These novel findings indicate how childhood trauma and its subsequent impact on mindfulness not only affects a student's functioning within their close relationships but also has effects on their larger cultural values. In particular, the findings from the current study suggest that childhood trauma may decrease a student's interdependence within their university community, which is crucial for their psychological and academic success.

The study compares the psychological symptoms of children and sociality in the toxic humidifier disinfectant and norm groups. We examine how psychological symptoms are differentially related to sociality by the two groups. The participants included 130 toxic humidifier disinfectant survivors and 129 children in the norm group. We used the bivariate correlation and a multi-group Structural Equation Model (SEM) to explore group differences in the relationship between psychological symptoms and sociality. The results indicate that survivors' psychological symptoms were significantly higher than that of those in the norm group. When controlling for the influence of all other psychological symptoms on sociality, somatic complaints had a positive effect on sociality in the survivor group. Furthermore, the more attention problems faced by the survivor group, the more significantly difficult sociality was. Practical implications are discussed for child survivors exposed to toxic humidifier disinfectant.

This study, rooted in the Bioecological Systems and Cultural Spillover theories, explores the factors influencing interpersonal violence development. Analyzing data from 4,167 men (mean age = 20.67, SD = 1.71) and 9,969 women (mean age = 20.42, SD = 1.70), the model tests the influence of sex, childhood aggression, self-control, violent peers, violent parenting, violence approval, state violence, and militarization on interpersonal violence. Linear Mixed-Effects Models revealed that interpersonal violence is positively associated with childhood aggression, violent peers, violent parenting, and violence approval; and it is negatively associated with self-control. State violence and militarization indirectly affect interpersonal violence through violent parenting and violence approval. The findings underscore the complex interplay of individual and societal factors in shaping interpersonal violence.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s40653-025-00731-z.