It is well evidenced that exposure to early psychological trauma in childhood or adolescence represents a substantial risk factor for an adult psychopathological development. In particular, so called type II trauma events, i.e. repeated or chronic interpersonal traumatic experiences like emotional, physical, sexual abuse, and physical, emotional neglect are associated with the development of a wide range of mental disorders.Keywords: Psychological trauma; Childhood; Emotion; Mental health; Sexual abuse
CommentaryLater in life (e.g. posttraumatic stress disorder, borderline personality disorder (BPD), substance use disorders as well as affective and anxiety disorders) [1][2][3]. However, emotion regulation processes seem to play an important role in the way individuals respond to and regulate themselves in the face of aversive or challenging events [4]. The ability to modulate the intensity and/or duration of emotional states in different contexts constitutes the main focus or our research group [5]. Hence. for a deeper understanding of the impact of early psychological trauma on later mental health, we investigate emotion regulation processes. In general, processes of emotion regulation can be understood as a transdiagnostic factor in the development of psychopathology and therefore can help to explain dysfunction across diagnostic categories [6]. In particular, processes of emotion dysregulation are associated with psychopathology (e.g. use of maladaptive emotion regulation strategies like rumination or distraction is associated with greater extent of psychopathology) [7][8][9]. In turn, functional emotion regulation processes (e.g. the use of adaptive emotion regulation strategies like acceptance or reappraisal) are associated with mental health, even in individuals after history of early psychological trauma [10]. More specifically, we found that functional emotion regulation processes are relevant for a resilient development in mentally healthy individuals either with or without experiences of child maltreatment. Hence, emotion regulation processes might have a relevant function in the relation between early psychological trauma and later development of psychopathology.Indeed, findings of our research group indicate that emotion dysregulation serves as a mediator for the association between early psychological trauma and later development of general psychopathology and especially of substance use disorder [11,12].In addition, to extend the understanding of developmental pathways for psychopathology after early psychological trauma, we also conduct longitudinal daily process studies with multiple daily measurement points in participants' natural environment (ecological momentary assessment, EMA). Testing the drinking to cope hypothesis, we investigated effects of quality and intensity (high vs. low) of trauma-associated negative emotions (shame vs. sadness) on daily emotion regulation processes in early traumatized individuals with and without psychopathology. We found that the experience of intense s...