Parental childhood trauma exerts profound impacts on both their own and their offspring's psychopathological problems such as depressive symptoms. The underlying mechanisms of these effects, particularly from the perspective of parent-child interdependence, still need further exploration. This study adopted the actor-partner interdependence model to investigate the associations between parental childhood trauma and parental and adolescent depressive symptoms, and the mediating roles of parental and adolescent emotion regulation difficulties in the relations. This study included 125 eligible parent-adolescent dyads from Northwest China, with data collected at two time points across a 1-year interval. Parents aged 33-69 years (Mage = 41.19, SD = 7.19, 58% mothers) were invited to complete the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire and Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale at T1 and the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale at T2, and adolescents aged 13-16 (Mage = 14.41, SD = 0.53, 50% girls) were asked to complete the face-word Stroop task assessing emotion regulation difficulties at T1 and the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale at T2. Results showed that parental childhood trauma at T1 predicted both parental and adolescent depressive symptoms at T2. In addition, parental childhood trauma at T1 affected parental depressive symptoms at T2 only via parental emotion regulation difficulties at T1, and parental childhood trauma at T1 affected adolescent depressive symptoms at T2 via both adolescent and parental emotion regulation difficulties at T1. These findings suggest an actor-partner interdependence mechanism underlying the associations between parental childhood trauma and their own and offspring's depressive symptoms. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
Background: Adolescent major depressive disorder (MDD) is heterogeneous, with diverse and frequently co-occurring psychopathological manifestations. Although family-related experiences, childhood trauma, rumination, and psychological resilience have each been linked to adolescent mental health, less is known about how they are interrelated and jointly associated with distinct psychopathological domains. This study examined these associations within an integrative framework. Methods: This cross-sectional study included 80 adolescents with MDD and 53 healthy controls. Family functioning, parenting, childhood trauma, rumination, psychological resilience, and four clinical domains, including affective distress, suicidal ideation, the non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) spectrum, and self-regulation difficulties, were assessed using validated instruments. Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) examined their multivariate associations. Sensitivity analyses restricted to the MDD sample and covariate-adjusted regression models assessed the robustness of the findings. Results: The four clinical domains showed high reliability and acceptable discriminant validity. Family dysfunction was associated with maladaptive parenting and childhood trauma, and maladaptive parenting was associated with childhood trauma (beta = .383-.600; all p < .001). Childhood trauma was associated with greater rumination (beta = .625) and lower psychological resilience (beta = -.405; both p < .001). Rumination and psychological resilience showed opposing associations with all four domains (rumination: beta = .280-.559; resilience: beta = -.265 to -.399; all p <= .006). Family dysfunction, maladaptive parenting, and childhood trauma showed significant total indirect associations with each domain (all p < .001). The model explained 53%-85% of the variance across the four domains. The MDD-only analysis reproduced the principal associations observed in the combined sample and additionally showed direct associations between maladaptive parenting and all four clinical domains. Covariate-adjusted analyses retained all principal associations except the resilience-NSSI association. Conclusions: The findings support a multidimensional characterization of adolescent MDD comprising distinguishable yet interrelated domains of affective-psychosomatic distress, suicidal ideation, the NSSI spectrum, and self-regulation difficulties. The partly shared and partly distinct associations of these domains with family-related adversity, rumination, and psychological resilience support considering domain-level psychopathology alongside diagnostic status and global depression severity in research on adolescent MDD.
P. Wang, Y. Zhang, X. Wang et al.· medRxiv· 0 citations
BACKGROUND
Emotion regulation difficulties have been implicated as a risk factor for anxiety disorders in youth, but prospective studies disentangling within-person from between-person effects are needed to substantiate such a claim. We therefore tested the bidirectional, within-person relations between emotion regulation and symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder, specific phobia, and social anxiety from 1st grade to late adolescence.
METHODS
Participants were 911 children and adolescents from the Trondheim Early Secure Study, a Norwegian birth cohort sample assessed biennially from ages 6 to 18. Emotion regulation was reported by parents and teachers. Anxiety symptoms were assessed using structured diagnostic interviews. Results from Random Intercept Cross-Lagged Panel Models (RI-CLPM) were contrasted with those from ordinary Cross-lagged Panel Models (CLPM). Age and sex differences were examined.
RESULTS
According to CLPM, lower emotion regulation, as reported by both parents and teachers and across ages and sexes, predicted a higher number of anxiety symptoms two years later, and vice versa. However, according to RI-CLPM, apart from two paths in the model of parent-reported emotion regulation with specific phobia, no prospective within-person associations were found.
CONCLUSIONS
Prospective relations between emotion regulation and anxiety may primarily be due to common factors linking the two, as these associations are no longer significant when time-invariant confounding is accounted for and within- and between-person effects are disentangled. Our results do not support the hypothesis that poor emotion regulation increases the risk of developing anxiety disorder symptoms.
Shuang Xue, L. Wichstrøm, M. Henriksen et al.· Journal of Anxiety Disorders· 0 citations
OBJECTIVES
A robust literature documents parents' influence on children's and adolescents' emotion regulation, but far fewer studies have examined whether parental socialization and adolescent emotion regulation continue to have influence on adjustment outcomes in emerging or early adulthood particularly among bicultural youth. This study addresses this gap by tracing these developmental pathways into a critical transitional period, thereby clarifying the continuity of emotion regulation processes across adolescence and early adulthood.
METHOD
In this longitudinal study, we examined whether parental psychological control during adolescence indirectly predicts internalizing and externalizing problems in early adulthood through adolescents' emotion regulation difficulties in 107 Chinese American youth (64 females, 43 males; Mage 16 years, SD 1.4) and their first-generation immigrant parents.
RESULTS
Direct associations emerged between parental psychological control and adolescent emotion dysregulation and between emotion dysregulation and externalizing problems but not internalizing problems. Emotion dysregulation also mediated the link between psychological control and externalizing problems but not internalizing problems.
CONCLUSION
Results underscore emotion regulation as a central mechanism linking youths' internalization of emotion-related parenting practices to their later adjustment in early adulthood. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
J. Liew, Su Jiang, Jun Wang et al.· Cultural diversity & ethnic...· 0 citations
The Social Information Processing model suggests that impairments in parental characteristics (cognitive and affective) can lead to important dysfunctions in parenting. This study aimed to investigate the relationships among risk of maltreatment (Child Abuse Potential, CAP), emotional regulation, and empathy, exploring gender differences for the possible moderating role of empathy in the relationship between emotion regulation and CAP. A community sample of 110 fathers and 149 mothers of Italian children, aged 6 to 14 years (M = 9.6; standard deviation [SD] = 2.3), was recruited. Correlational analyses showed that risk of child maltreatment was related to various difficulties in emotion regulation and empathy, with gender difference that played a different role in the moderation models. Specifically, in fathers, the lack of perspective-taking moderated the effects of difficulties in controlling impulsive behaviours and CAP. In mothers, empathic concern moderated the effects of difficulties in recognizing emotions and lack of emotional awareness on CAP. Clinical implications were discussed.
Sarah Miragoli, Luca Milani, E. Camisasca· Journal of Interpersonal Vio...· 0 citations
Anxiety disorders are among the most common and distressing psychiatric conditions among youth. Child anxiety symptoms are impacted by a variety of factors, including parenting practices. Parental accommodation (i.e., a parent modifying their routine or facilitating avoidance to alleviate their child's anxiety) is one of the most well-established parenting practices thought to maintain anxiety in youth. Scant research, however, has explored how child emotion regulation impacts this relationship. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate whether parent-reported child emotion regulation moderated the relationship between parental accommodation and child anxiety symptom severity. Participants included parents of youth with mixed diagnostic status (i.e., some with psychiatric disorders, some healthy controls; N = 63, ages 7-17). Emotion regulation moderated the relationship between parental accommodation and child anxiety, such that among children whose parents reported higher levels of emotion regulation, accommodation more strongly predicted child anxiety. These results differed from our expectations and suggests that future research evaluating how emotion regulation impacts the accommodation-anxiety link is warranted.
Evan Realbuto, Bridget Feler, Megan C DuBois et al.· Child Psychiatry and Human D...· 0 citations
This study examined the relationship between retrospective childhood emotional abuse (CEA) and adult depressive symptoms by investigating the mediating role of cognitive rumination and the moderating role of psychological resilience within a Transylvanian-Hungarian sample. A cross-sectional sample of Hungarian-speaking adults (N = 223, M_age = 24.9 years) completed an online battery of validated self-report measures assessing childhood emotional abuse, depressive symptoms, rumination, and resilience. Mediation and moderation analyses were conducted using a bootstrapping procedure with 5,000 resamples.
The findings supported a partial mediation model, indicating that rumination represented a substantial indirect pathway linking childhood emotional abuse to depressive symptoms. Specifically, the indirect effect accounted for approximately 74.7% of the total effect. Furthermore, resilience significantly moderated the relationship between childhood emotional abuse and depressive symptoms (b = -0.04, p < .001), suggesting that the association between early emotional abuse and adult depressive symptomatology was weaker among individuals reporting higher levels of psychological resilience.
These findings are consistent with cognitive vulnerability models of depression and suggest that repetitive negative thinking and resilience processes may play important roles in understanding individual differences in psychological adjustment following childhood emotional abuse. Although the cross-sectional design precludes causal inferences, the results provide additional evidence from an understudied cultural context and may have implications for interventions aimed at reducing maladaptive rumination and strengthening resilience among individuals exposed to early emotional adversity.
K. Király, Bálint Dimén, Iacobina Carmen Zau et al.· Brain: Broad Research in Art...· 0 citations
