Citation

Choi JY, Choi YM, Gim MS, Park JH, Park SH. Child Abuse Negl. 2014; 38(8): 1313-1319.

Affiliation

Department of Psychology, Yonsei University, Shinchon-dong, Seodaemun-gu, Seoul, Republic of Korea.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2014, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.chiabu.2014.04.016

PMID

24841063

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to first examine whether childhood abuse predicts symptom complexity, as indicated by the number of clinically elevated scales on the MMPI-2 in an adult clinical sample. Secondly, we investigated whether emotion regulation difficulties mediated the relationship between childhood abuse and symptom complexity. A total of 162 adult outpatients not presenting with psychotic symptoms completed the Korean Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (K-CTQ), Life Events Checklist (LEC), Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS), and Korean Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2). Partial correlation analysis results indicated that after controlling for the presence of adulthood trauma, childhood abuse was associated with more symptom complexity, or more clinically elevated scales on the MMPI-2. Furthermore, structural equation modeling results showed that emotion regulation difficulties partially mediated the relationship between childhood abuse and symptom complexity. These findings indicate that individuals who had experienced childhood abuse evidence simultaneous presentation of diverse clinical symptoms.

Language: en