Insecure attachment and maladaptive emotion regulation mediating the relationship between childhood trauma and borderline personality features
Open accessAbstract
BACKGROUND: Previous studies suggested that childhood trauma is an important etiologic factor for the development of borderline personality disorder (BPD). Moreover, insecure attachment and maladaptive emotion regulation (ER) might be related to childhood trauma and BPD. This study was aimed to explore the relationships among childhood trauma, insecure attachment, maladaptive ER, and BPD features. METHODS: A cohort of 637 patients with psychological disorders completed a series of psychometric instruments such as the Personality Diagnostic Questionnaire-4+ (PDQ-4+), the 23-Item Borderline Symptom List, the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire, the Attachment Style Questionnaire, and the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire. The path analyses were conducted to investigate the experience-driven model that whether insecure attachment and maladaptive ER could mediate the relationship between childhood trauma and BPD features. The random forest regression was performed to select variables that contribute significantly to BPD features, which variables would be incorporated into the data-driven model to further confirm the experience-driven model. RESULTS: Both the experience-driven model and the data-driven model verified that there were three significant mediation pathways (childhood trauma → insecure attachment/maladaptive ER → BPD features, childhood trauma → insecure attachment → maladaptive ER → BPD features; all p < .05), and the most weighted mediation pathway by which childhood trauma influencing the BPD features was through insecure attachment and then through maladaptive ER (weighted 53.16%). CONCLUSION: The influence of childhood trauma on BPD features was mainly mediated by the combination of insecure attachment and maladaptive emotion regulation.
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Among adults in mental health treatment, insecure or disorganized attachment and emotion dysregulation are inter-related and mediate the relationship between childhood maltreatment and BPD features.
“Among adults in mental health treatment, insecure or disorganized attachment and emotion dysregulation have been shown to be inter-related and to mediate the relationship between childhood maltreatment and BPD features [130].”
From Complex PTSD and borderline personality disorder (2021) · cites this paper as [130]
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- Authors
- Peng, W., Liu, Z., Liu, Q., Chu, J., Zheng, K., Wang, J., Wei, H., Zhong, M., Ling, Y., & Yi, J.
- Affiliations
- Central South University (CN)
- South China Normal University (CN)
- School of Computer Science and Engineering Central South University Changsha China
- Hunan Normal University (CN)
- Corresponding author
- Yi, Jinyao
- Venue
- Depression and Anxiety
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2020-07-27
- Volume
- 38
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 28-39
- ISSN
- 1091-4269 (ISSN-L)
- 1520-6394
- OpenAlex
- W3045589275
- Cited by
- 56
- References
- 71
- Citations by year
- 2026: 10 · 2025: 6 · 2024: 12 · 2023: 13 · 2022: 9 · 2021: 5 · 2015: 1
- FWCI
- 2.70
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Depression and Anxiety (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Natural Science Foundation of China (81871074)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Personality Disorders and Psychopathology
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Psychoanalysis and Psychopathology Research
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Personality Traits and Psychology
- Keywords
- childhood trauma, insecure attachment, maladaptive emotion regulation, borderline personality traits, borderline personality disorder, mediation pathways, attachment styles, cognitive emotion regulation
- MeSH terms
- Emotional Regulation, Borderline Personality Disorder, Humans, Personality, Surveys and Questionnaires
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