Patterns of childhood maltreatment and intimate partner violence, emotion dysregulation, and mental health symptoms among lesbian, gay, and bisexual emerging adults: A three-step latent class approach

Abstract

Background: Childhood abuse and neglect (CAN) and intimate partner violence victimization (IPV) is prevalent among lesbian, gay, and bisexual individuals (LGB). Identification of distinct patterns of childhood and adult victimization, including technology-mediated and face-to-face IPV, and their cumulative relations to mental/behavioral health challenges, among LGB people is needed to facilitate identification of at-risk individuals. Objective: Using latent class analysis, we first sought to identify patterns of lifetime interpersonal victimization, primarily five types of CAN and IPV in LGB emerging adults. Second, we examined if LGB-status and race/ethnicity predicted classmembership; third, we assessed differences between the latent classes on emotion dysregulation, depressive and anxiety symptoms, and alcohol use. Participants: Participants were 288 LGB adults between 18-29 years (M = 25.35, SD = 2.76; 41.7% gay/lesbian) recruited via Amazon MTurk. Methods and Results: The 3-step LCA identified five-latent classes: high victimization, childhood emotional abuse and neglect, cybervictimization, adult face-to-face IPV, and lower victimization. People of color (including Hispanics) were more likely to be in the high victimization class, and bisexual individuals, especially bisexual women, in the childhood emotional abuse and neglect class. High victimization and childhood emotional abuse and neglect classes had elevated emotion dysregulation levels and depression and anxiety symptoms, and the high victimization class reported the highest levels of alcohol use. *3. Manuscript without author identifiers Click here to view linked References CHILDHOOD MALTREATMENT AND IPV AMONG LESBIAN GAY BISEXUAL INDIVIDUALS 2 Conclusion: Findings suggest a detrimental effect of cumulative interpersonal victimization on emotion dysregulation and the mental/behavioral health of LGB emerging adults, with bisexuals and LGB-people of color at heightened risk of cumulative victimization and of related mental/behavioral health challenges.

Witnessing Parental Violence and Cyber IPV Perpetration in Hispanic Emerging Adults: The Mediating Role of Attitudes Toward IPV

“…In addition to the traditional face-to-face IPV, cyberspace presents another avenue for perpetration of IPV (Caridade et al, 2019;Marganski & Melander, 2018). Nonetheless, the majority of the literature in cyber IPV is based on individuals who identify as White non-Hispanic (e.g., Wolford-Clevenger et al, 2016), with only a few studies examining its impact on sub-populations and social contexts (e.g., in lesbian, gay, bisexual adults: Charak et al, 2019; in Hispanic young adults: .…”

Coping styles, dysfunctional schemes and psychopathological symptoms related to emotional dependence on the aggressor partner

“…Another aspect to consider is that violence received and emotional dependence were positively related to self-criticism in the present study and the latter presented a strong association with depression (Petrocchi, Dentale, & Gilbert, 2019), interpersonal problems and psychotic symptoms (Werner, Tibubos, Rohrmann, & Reiss, 2019). In addition, childhood abuse and neglect, characteristic in people with emotional dependence and who remain in violent relationships, predict elevated levels of emotion dysregulation and symptoms of depression and anxiety in adulthood (Charak, Villarreal, Schmitz, Hirai, & D Ford, 2019). As for people with emotional dependence, they tend to experience emotional oscillations and affective maladjustments in the form of negative feelings such as pain, sadness, despair, tiredness, constant fears, absence of freedom and distress in their relationships (Chui, Zilcha-Mano, Dinger, Barrett, & Barber 2016;Skvortsova & Shumskiy, 2014).…”

Unique, Additive, and Interactive Effects of Types of Intimate Partner Cybervictimization on Depression in Hispanic Emerging Adults

“…The present findings warrant replication and future research should continue to investigate the mental health problems that may result from cyber IPV types utilizing the interactive effect model considering that differential effect of specific combinations of other interpersonal violence victimization types (i.e., child abuse and face-to-face IPV) has been reported in prior studies (Fujiwara et al, 2010;Kaslow & Thompson, 2008;Senn & Carey, 2010;Stoicescu et al, 2019). In addition, future studies should continue to investigate the association between psychological, sexual, and stalking cyber IPV and mental health using standardized questionnaire to facilitate comparison of findings across samples of White Non-Hispanics and other diverse and at-risk samples (e.g., LGBTQ+ population, other racial minorities; Charak et al, 2019). In particular, future studies should also focus on examining the severity of cyber IPV as prior studies on adulthood victimization suggest that higher intensities of victimization (e.g., longer duration, higher frequency) are associated with severe psychological problems (Charak, DiLillo, Messman-Moore, & Gratz, 2018).…”

“…Presently, the extant literature focuses on face-to-face intimate partner violence and its negative effects on a victim's mental health; in contrast, lesser is known about its cyber variant: intimate partner cyberviolence (C. Brown & Hegarty, 2018;Gámez-Guadix, Borrajo, & Calvete, 2018). Despite the limited research, in the past few years there has been noticeable progress in the investigation of cybervictimization by an intimate partner (henceforth referred to as cyber IPV) and the ensuing mental health problems, such as depressive symptoms (Charak, Villarreal, Schmitz, Hirai, & Ford, 2019;Drouin, Ross, & Tobin, 2015;Weingarten, Wu, Gates, Carreno, & Baker, 2018;Wolford-Clevenger et al, 2016).…”