Secure Attachment Moderates the Relation of Sexual Trauma With Trauma Symptoms Among Adolescents From an Inpatient Psychiatric Facility

Abstract

Experiencing sexual trauma has been linked to internalizing and externalizing psychopathologies. Insecure attachment has been shown to moderate the relation between sexual trauma and trauma symptoms among adults. However, few studies have explored relations among sexual trauma, attachment insecurity, and trauma symptoms in adolescence, and none have used developmentally appropriate measures. The present study sought to examine attachment security as a potential moderator of the relation between having a history of sexual trauma (HST) and trauma symptoms among adolescents at an inpatient psychiatric facility. Attachment to caregivers was measured by the Child Attachment Interview (CAI) and trauma symptoms by the Trauma Symptoms Checklist for Children (TSCC). HST was assessed with responses to two separate interviews that asked about traumatic experiences: the Computerized Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children (C-DISC) and the CAI. Moderation analyses were conducted using univariate General Linear Modeling (GLM). Of the 229 study participants, 50 (21.8%) had a HST. The relation between HST and trauma symptoms was significantly moderated by insecure attachment with both mother, F(1, 228) = 4.818, p = .029, and father, F(1, 228) = 6.370, p = .012. Specifically, insecurely attached adolescents with a HST exhibited trauma symptoms at levels significantly greater than securely attached adolescents with a HST and adolescents with no HST. Results are consistent with previous research that suggests secure attachment may protect against the development of trauma symptoms among those who have experienced a sexual trauma.

The Child Attachment Interview: A Narrative Review

“…They were able to have distinct representations of the different parenting received from their birth and foster parents (Ahmed et al, 2015), although they maintained insecure state of mind regarding attachment toward their biological parents (Joseph et al, 2014). A further study (Jardin et al, 2015) found that attachment security shielded adolescents who experienced sexual trauma against the later occurrence of trauma symptoms.…”

“…Security attachment was also found to be a protective factor against the onset of depression in the children of depressed mothers because of the ability of secure children to regulate emotions as well as to adopt successful coping strategies throughout periods of stress (Fox and Borelli, 2015). In general, a prevalence of insecurely attached children was found in clinical samples (Target et al, 2003; Shmueli-Goetz et al, 2008; Venta et al, 2014; Bizzi et al, 2015; Glazebrook et al, 2015; Jardin et al, 2015). Disorganized attachment was associated with child experiences of depressive symptoms and shyness, and with parent-reports of social anxiety, inattention, and thought problems (Borelli et al, 2010b) as well as with disruptive behavior and Somatic Symptoms Disorders (SSDs; Bizzi et al, 2015).…”

Childhood sexual abuse and attachment insecurity: Associations with child psychological difficulties.

“…One study to date examined the associations between attachment insecurity within a sample of preschoolers who had been exposed to CSA, finding that within this population, insecurity conferred risk for internalizing and externalizing difficulties (Zéphyr et al, 2015). To our knowledge, only a single study has tested the contributions of both CSA and attachment to youth's psychological adjustment; Jardin et al found that among adolescents receiving inpatient psychiatric care, attachment security moderates the association between CSA and trauma symptoms (Jardin, Venta, Newlin, Ibarra, & Sharp, 2015), such that adolescents with insecure attachment and CSA exposure showed significantly greater trauma symptoms.…”

Get secure soon: attachment in abused adolescents and young adults before and after trauma-focused cognitive processing therapy

“…The rather strong association between AR avoidance and posttraumatic avoidance may imply, on the one hand, that attachment insecurities lead to an increase in posttraumatic avoidance, and, on the other, that posttraumatic avoidance leads to attachment insecurities in close relationships. The comparison of our results with existing research is difficult, as most of the studies included adults and comparable adolescents studies used different assessment methods and did not report dimensional attachment scores [21][22][23][24]. One comparable study might be the work of Lim et al [25] that used the ECR-R in a sample of college undergraduates with various traumatic events.…”

“…However, studies that focus on adolescents' and young adults' attachment and its association with PTSS are sparse and show mixed results. Using a categorical approach, some studies reported a relationship between attachment status and PTSS in the expected direction [21][22][23], whereas another failed to prove this association [24]. To our knowledge, there is only one paper by Lim et al [25] that analyzed attachment dimensions and their association with PTSS in young people.…”