Hostname: page-component-5db58dd55d-f6s65 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-07-07T21:32:44.147Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Deprivation and threat, emotion dysregulation, and psychopathology: Concurrent and longitudinal associations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 April 2019

Helen M. Milojevich*
Affiliation:
Center for Developmental Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA
Kate E. Norwalk
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA
Margaret A. Sheridan
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA
*
Author for correspondence: Helen M. Milojevich, Center for Developmental Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 100 East Franklin St., Chapel Hill, NC 27514; E-mail: hmilojev@email.unc.edu.

Abstract

Maltreatment increases risk for psychopathology in childhood and adulthood, thus identifying mechanisms that influence these associations is necessary for future prevention and intervention. Emotion dysregulation resulting from maltreatment is one potentially powerful mechanism explaining risk for psychopathology. This study tests a conceptual model that distinguishes deprivation and threat as distinct forms of exposure with different pathways to psychopathology. Here we operationalize threat as exposure to physical and/or sexual abuse and deprivation as exposure to neglect. We test the hypothesis that threat and deprivation differentially predict use of avoidant strategies and total regulation. Data were drawn from the Longitudinal Studies on Child Abuse and Neglect (LONGSCAN study; N = 866), which followed high-risk children from age 4 to 18. At age 6, children and their parents reported on adversity exposure. Case records documented exposure to abuse and neglect. At 18, adolescents reported on regulation strategies and psychopathology. Regression analyses indicated that greater exposure to threat, but not deprivation, predicted greater use of avoidant strategies in adolescence. Moreover, avoidance partially mediated the longitudinal association between exposure to threat in early childhood and symptoms of internalizing psychopathology in adolescence. Results suggest that abuse and neglect differentially predict regulation strategy use and that regulation strategy use predicts psychopathology.

Information

Type
Special Issue Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable