Assessing the mediating role of emotion regulation and experiential avoidance within a posttraumatic stress disorder and racial trauma framework.

Abstract

Theoretical and empirical evidence has begun to delineate posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and racial trauma, but the degree to which individual psychological processes differ in the development of these two outcomes remains limited. Despite key distinctions in etiology and phenotypic presentations, prominent PTSD risk factors such as difficulties in emotion regulation and experiential avoidance (EA) may also contribute to the development of racial trauma. The goal of the present cross-sectional study was to investigate how difficulties in emotion regulation and EA differ in their associations with PTSD and racial trauma. For this study, racial and ethnic minority undergraduate students completed a battery of questionnaires including the Everyday Discrimination Scale, Brief Experiential Avoidance Questionnaire, Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale, Trauma Symptoms of Discrimination Scale, and the PTSD checklist for DSM-5. A path model suggested emotion regulation difficulties and EA significantly mediated the relationship between perceived discrimination and PTSD symptoms. However, only emotion regulation difficulties mediated the relationship between perceived discrimination and racial trauma symptoms. Compared to racial trauma, pairwise comparisons suggested that emotion regulation difficulties and EA indirect effects were significantly greater when predicting PTSD symptoms. Additionally, the effects of emotion regulation difficulties were greater than EA when predicting PTSD symptoms and racial trauma. Findings of the present study suggest individual psychological factors may play a lesser role in the development of racial trauma compared to PTSD symptoms. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).