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Emotion Regulation and Distress During the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Role of Childhood Abuse.
- Source :
- Journal of Interpersonal Violence; Sep2022, Vol. 37 Issue 17/18, pNP16302-NP16326, 25p
- Publication Year :
- 2022
-
Abstract
- The COVID-19 pandemic may be experienced as traumatogenic and may fuel or exacerbate psychological distress and trauma-related symptoms. Based on trauma research, one might expect that survivors of childhood abuse would be susceptible to these negative outcomes during the pandemic, and that among this population a stronger relation between emotion regulation difficulties and symptomatology would be found. Aiming to explore these suppositions, an online survey was conducted among 710 Israeli adults. Of them, 370 were childhood abuse survivors. A history of childhood abuse, COVID-19-related stressors, overall psychological distress, and peritraumatic stress symptoms during the pandemic were assessed via selfreport measures. Participants with a history of childhood abuse had elevated overall psychological distress as well as peritraumatic stress symptoms during the pandemic, compared to nonabused participants, above and beyond demographic characteristics and COVID-19-related stressors. Emotion regulation difficulties were related to elevated psychological distress and peritraumatic stress symptoms among both childhood abuse survivors and nonabused participants. Nonetheless, a history of childhood abuse moderated the relations between the emotion regulation difficulty of being unable to engage in goal-directed behaviors when distressed (on one hand) and mental outcomes (on the other): Although the associations between inability to engage in goal-directed behaviors, overall psychological distress, and peritraumatic stress symptoms were nonsignificant among nonabused participants, they were significant among childhood abuse survivors. The current findings suggest that a history of childhood abuse might be a risk factor for distress in the face of COVID-19, and that childhood abuse survivors would benefit from clinical interventions that promote emotion regulation skills during this ongoing global health crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Subjects :
- PSYCHOLOGICAL stress
POST-traumatic stress disorder
CHILD abuse
SELF-evaluation
CROSS-sectional method
ONE-way analysis of variance
CHILD behavior
RISK assessment
SURVEYS
PEARSON correlation (Statistics)
INCOME
DESCRIPTIVE statistics
ANALYSIS of covariance
QUESTIONNAIRES
EMOTION regulation
CLASSIFICATION of mental disorders
PSYCHOLOGICAL distress
COVID-19 pandemic
GOAL (Psychology)
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 08862605
- Volume :
- 37
- Issue :
- 17/18
- Database :
- Complementary Index
- Journal :
- Journal of Interpersonal Violence
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 159888085
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1177/08862605211021968