Remote and adjacent psychological predictors of early-adulthood resilience: Role of early-life trauma, extraversion, life-events, depression, and social-support.

Sitong Shen,Zhaohua Chen,Mengjia Zhang,Xuemei Qin,Qin Dai,Zeng-Jie Ye

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0251859

Abstract

Resilience is important for people to maintain mental health after negative life-events. However, its longitudinal psychological and social predictors are poorly revealed. Based on the ecological system theory model, the current study aimed to determine the longitudinal temporal mechanism underlying the development of early-adulthood resilience using long-term (early-life trauma and personality), medium-term and short-term (life-events, social support, and depression) psychosocial predictors. A total of 505 university students were recruited at baseline (T1), 433 of whom took part in a three-year longitudinal investigation (T2). The results showed that at T1 and T2, the resilience scores of individuals were identically high (72.98 and 73.21, respectively). Pearson correlation analysis showed that early-adulthood resilience was negatively correlated with early-life trauma, psychoticism and neuroticism, depression, ad life-events, and positively correlated with extraversion, social-support, and resilience. Regression and structural equation models showed that extraversion had a direct positive effect on T1 resilience through the mediation of T1 life-events, depression, and social-support, while childhood emotional neglect (EN) had indirect negative effect and extraversion had direct positive effect on T2 resilience through the mediation of T1 resilience, and T2 depression and social-support. In conclusion, this study is among the first to reveal the longitudinal temporal process of the development of early-adulthood resilience using remote and adjacent psychosocial predictors. The findings confirm that childhood EN and extraversion have a remote impact on early-adulthood resilience through recent and current depression and social-support. Our results imply that early-life trauma does not hinder the development of early-adulthood resilience in a linear trend.

Highlights

Resilience, or hardiness, is a capability or character trait that helps individual overcome the ups and downs of daily life [1], and further assist people to maintain an emotional balance after a traumatic experience [2]
It has been confirmed that resilience is positively related to extraversion [24]. These results suggested that the endogenous extraversion personality trait foster resilience; whether it mediates the effect of early-life trauma on early-adulthood resilience remains unclear
The participants were investigated with the Beck depression inventory-II (BDI-II), the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ), the Eysenck personality questionnaire (EPQ), the Social-Support Rating Scale (SSRS), the ConnorDavidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC), and the Adolescent Self-Rating Life-Events Checklist (ASLEC)

Summary

Introduction

Resilience, or hardiness, is a capability or character trait that helps individual overcome the ups and downs of daily life [1], and further assist people to maintain an emotional balance after a traumatic experience [2]. As a long-term family or social predictor, psychologists assumed that maltreatment during early-life (mainly before 16 years of age) [9, 10] diminished emotional processing and social competence in children and adolescents [11], which was commonly known as a destructive factor for personal mental health problems such as depression and post-traumatic stress disorder [10, 12]. The study warranted a multi-time point observation of dynamic psychosocial-status (i.e., depression, life-events, and social support) based on the ecological system theory model, which may provide insight into the temporal mechanism underlying the development of early-adulthood resilience, using long-term and short-term predictors. Based on the ecological system theory model, the current study aimed to identify the temporal process underlying the development of early-adulthood resilience using long-term (early-life trauma and personality), medium-term and short-term (recent and current life-events, social support, and depression) psychosocial predictors. Our hypotheses were as follows: (1) long-term psychosocial vulnerabilities, i.e., early-life trauma and personality (i.e., extraversion) may have remote effects on early-adulthood resilience; (2) recent life-events, social support, and depression may play a medium-term mediating role in the relationship between long-term psychosocial vulnerability and early-adulthood resilience; and (3) current life-events, social support, and depression may play a short-term mediating role in the relationship between long-term psychosocial vulnerability and early-adulthood resilience

Participants

Procedure

Results