Emotional but not physical maltreatment is independently related to psychopathology in subjects with various degrees of social anxiety: a web-based internet survey

Abstract

BackgroundPrevious studies reported that social phobia is associated with a history of child maltreatment. However, most of these studies focused on physical and sexual maltreatment whilst little is known about the specific impact of emotional abuse and neglect on social anxiety. We examined the association between emotional maltreatment, including parental emotional maltreatment as well as emotional peer victimization, and social anxiety symptoms in subjects with various degrees of social anxiety.MethodsThe study was conducted as a web-based Internet survey of participants (N = 995) who had social anxiety symptoms falling within the high range, and including many respondents who had scores in the clinical range. The assessment included measures of child maltreatment, emotional peer victimization, social anxiety symptoms and general psychopathology.ResultsRegression and mediation analyses revealed that parental emotional maltreatment and emotional peer victimization were independently related to social anxiety and mediated the impact of physical and sexual maltreatment. Subjects with a history of childhood emotional maltreatment showed higher rates of psychopathology than subjects with a history of physical maltreatment.ConclusionsAlthough our findings are limited by the use of an Internet survey and retrospective self-report measures, data indicated that social anxiety symptoms are mainly predicted by emotional rather than physical or sexual types of victimization.

Attentional avoidance in peer victimized individuals with and without psychiatric disorders

“…Construct validity has been confirmed through correlations with measures of psychological symptom distress and social anxiety. Moderate correlations with the scales of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire [90], as well as an incremental contribution to the prediction of psychopathology, support the idea that the FBS assesses an additional construct of child maltreatment [74,89]. The FBS was applied in several studies examining the role of peer victimization in terms of psychopathology and psychophysiology before suggesting a good fitness of the instrument (e.g., [74,81,[91][92][93] [100,101].…”

“…In particular, experiences of relational peer victimization increase the risk of various forms of psychopathology [73]. For instance, peer victimization is linked to sub-clinical as well as clinical social anxiety disorder (SAD) [71,[74][75][76][77][78][79][80][81]. Accordingly, Rosen, Milich, and Harris (2007) proposed a modified social-information-processing model in which the activation of a so-called victim schema initiates hypervigilance for threatening cues and an attentional bias to threatening compared to non-threatening cues in social interactions [82].…”

Childhood Maltreatment and Coping in Bipolar Disorder

“…For instance, during episodes of CEM, children may be ignored, isolated, or siblings may be favored. CEM has severe and persistent adverse effects on behavior and emotion in adulthood [2], and CEM is a potent predictor of depressive and anxiety disorders in later life [3,4]. Social rejection, ranging from active isolation to ignoring basic emotional needs, may enhance sensitivity towards future rejection [5].…”

The complex neurobiology of resilient functioning after child maltreatment

“…impaired learning, working memory, verbal fluency and cognitive flexibility) (Andrea Danese, Pariante, Caspi, Taylor, & Poulton, 2007;Egeland, 2009;Gibb & Alloy, 2006;Hart, Binggeli, Brassard, Bingelli, & Brassard, 1997;Majer, Nater, Lin, Capuron, & Reeves, 2010;Nanni, Uher, & Danese, 2012;Savitz, van der Merwe, Stein, Solms, & Ramesar, 2008;Shaffer, Yates, & Egeland, 2009;Trickett, Mennen, Kim, & Sang, 2009;Wright, Crawford, & Del Castillo, 2009;Yates & Wekerle, 2009). Finally, CM is a strong predictor for mental health disorders (Agnew-Blais & Danese, 2016;Hammen, Brennan, & Keenan-Miller, 2008;Hart et al, 1997;Hawker & Boulton, 2000;Iffland et al, 2012;McGregor et al, 2016;Mullen, Martin, Anderson, Romans, & Herbison, 1996;Spinhoven et al, 2010;Vachon, Krueger, Rogosch, & Cicchetti, 2015;Wright et al, 2009). …”