Abstract
Objectives: To explore the role of resilience as a mediator in the association between adverse childhood experiences (ACE) and emotional and behavioural problems (EBP) among adolescents. Methods: We used data from the Slovak 2018 Health Behaviour in School-aged Children study, comprising 2,839 adolescents aged 13–15 (mean age 13.93; 49.6% boys). We used multivariate linear regression performed on 5000 bootstrap samples adjusted for age, gender, family affluence to explore mediation of the associations between ACE (measured using the adapted Adverse Childhood Experience Questionnaire) and EBP (measured using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire) by resilience (measured with the Child and Youth Resilience Measure). Results: We found ACE [B = 0.78; 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.67|0.90] and resilience (B = −0.73; 95% CI: −0.79|−0.67) to be significantly associated with EBP. The association of ACE and EBP was mediated by resilience. The mediated indirect effect of resilience was ab = 0.25; 95% CI: 0.18|0.32. Conclusion: Resilience seems to play a mediator role in the relationship between ACE and EBP. Helping adolescents with ACE to build and use internal and external sources of resilience can decrease the negative impact of ACE on EBP.
Highlights
Adverse childhood experiences (ACE) regard a wide range of negative events that occur at a young age, such as abuse and/or neglect towards a child, domestic violence towards a youth’s mother, household substance abuse, household mental illness, parental separation/divorce, and other events [1,2,3]
We explored the change in the associations of ACE with emotional and behavioural problems (EBP) after adding resilience (Model 3) in order to explore the mediation by resilience
We found more ACE to increase the number of EBP (B 0.78; 95% confidence intervals (CI): 0.67|0.90) and more resilience to decrease it (−0.73; −0.79|−0.67)
Summary
Adverse childhood experiences (ACE) regard a wide range of negative events that occur at a young age, such as abuse and/or neglect towards a child, domestic violence towards a youth’s mother, household substance abuse, household mental illness, parental separation/divorce, and other events [1,2,3]. Resilience has been found to be a protective factor in relation to the development of EBP [22,23,24,25,26,27,28] and supports child flourishing while facing negative events [29]. In one of the few previously published studies on resilience as a mediator, resilience was shown to mediate the relationship between family functioning and depression among adolescents from single parent families [34] These findings support our hypothesis of resilience possibly having a role as mediator in the relations of ACE and EBP. Resilience may be considered a mediator, but the evidence on this role of resilience is lacking
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