Citation

Myers NS, Llera SJ. J. Trauma Dissociation 2020; ePub(ePub): ePub.

Affiliation

Department of Psychology, Towson University, Baltimore, MD, USA.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2020, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1080/15299732.2020.1719265

PMID

32000621

Abstract

Children that have been maltreated may experience manifold negative effects later in life. Two such sequelae are social anxiety and dissociation. Recent studies have noted their frequent co-occurrence, but no hypothesis has yet been offered explaining how they interact. College undergraduates (N = 198) completed the Child Trauma Questionnaire, Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale, and Cambridge Depersonalization Scale. Social anxiety significantly predicted severity of dissociation, and self-reported childhood maltreatment (CM) significantly predicted both social anxiety and dissociation. Notably, emotional abuse was the only significant subtype of CM to predict social anxiety. Furthermore, CM moderated the relationship between social anxiety and dissociation, such that the presence of CM strengthened the predictive effect of social anxiety on dissociation. This study was the first to implicate CM as a mechanism in the social anxiety-dissociation relationship. This study was also the first to note a social anxiety-dissociation link in a non-clinical sample, thus demonstrating the existence of this relationship along a continuum of severity - not solely for those with extreme disturbances.

Language: en

Keywords

Anxiety; anxiety disorders; childhood abuse; dissociation; emotion regulation; emotional abuse