Abstract
Background: Coronavirus-2019 (COVID-19) has been coexisting with humans for almost 2 years, consistently impacting people's daily life, medical environment, and mental health. This study aimed to test the series mediation model triggered by childhood trauma, in which perceived psychological impact of COVID-19 pandemic and sleep quality mediated the path sequentially and led to adverse mental health outcomes.Methods: A cross-sectional design involving 817 participants were enrolled via WeChat online survey. Participants completed questionnaires, including demographic features, the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire, Impact of Event Scale-Revised (IES-R) questionnaire, Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) questionnaire, and Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale (DASS-21). Pearson correlations and hierarchical multiple linear regression were employed to examine the association of childhood trauma and psychological stress of COVID-19, sleep quality, and mental health status. In addition, a series mediate analysis was carried out to examine sequence mediating effects of psychological impact of COVID-19 and sleep quality between childhood trauma and mental health status.Results: The results showed that childhood trauma is positively and significantly related to psychological distress of COVID-19 pandemic, sleep quality, and mental health status (p < 0.05). Hierarchical multiple linear regression analysis shown that demographic features explained 4.4, 2.1, and 4.0% of the total variance in DASS-21, IES-R, and PSQI total scale scores, respectively. Adding childhood trauma significantly increased the model variance of DASS-21 (ΔR2 = 0.129, F = 126.092, p = 0.000), IES-R (ΔR2 = 0.062, F = 54.771, p = 0.000), and PSQI total scale scores (ΔR2 = 0.055, F = 48.733, p = 0.000), respectively. Moreover, the series mediation model showed that the perceived impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and sleep quality were sequential mediators between childhood trauma and mental health status (proportion explained: 49.17%, p < 0.05).Conclusion: Amid the ravages of COVID-19, childhood trauma predicts poor mental health status, in part because of greater psychological impact related to COVID-19 and poorer global sleep quality. In order to improve mental health, future researchers should pay more attention to individuals with childhood trauma, for its association with greater stress related to life events and poorer sleep quality.
Highlights
2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19), a highly infectious and potentially fatal disease, has been coexisting with humans for almost 2 years
Considering childhood trauma as a independent variable, mental health status as the dependent variable, and psychological impact related to COVID-19 pandemic and PSQI global sleep quality as mediating variables, model
The association between childhood trauma and mental health status was partly mediated by psychological impact and sleep quality. This is the first study using series mediation model to examine whether the association between childhood trauma and mental health status could be partly explained by COVID-19 pandemic related psychological impact and sleep quality
Summary
2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19), a highly infectious and potentially fatal disease, has been coexisting with humans for almost 2 years. One study across geographic regions worldwide reported that events related to COVID-19 were more likely to be associated with mental health symptoms, especially symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), insomnia, depression, and anxiety in the general population [7]. Emotional or physical adverse experiences in one’s early life, was associated with increased risk for developing almost all mental disorders, including sleep disorders, depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, PTSD, and schizophrenia [8,9,10]. Coronavirus-2019 (COVID-19) has been coexisting with humans for almost 2 years, consistently impacting people’s daily life, medical environment, and mental health. This study aimed to test the series mediation model triggered by childhood trauma, in which perceived psychological impact of COVID-19 pandemic and sleep quality mediated the path sequentially and led to adverse mental health outcomes
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