The relationship between childhood trauma and health risk behavior in rural orphans: mediating effect of cognitive emotion regulation

Abstract

Objective To explore the status of health risk behaviors and its relationships with childhood trauma and cognitive emotion regulation in rural orphans. Methods Totally 56 orphans and 56 non-orphans in rural middle school were surveyed with the adolescent health related risky behavior inventory (AHRBI), the childhood trauma questionnaire (CTQ) and the cognitive emotion regulation questionnaire-Chinese version (CERQ-C). Results (1) Orphans performed significant higher scores in aggression & violence, rule & law breaking, suicide & self-injury, smoking & drinking, health-compromising behaviors and uprotected sex of AHRBI (1.67±0.64, 1.63±0.58, 1.53±0.67, 1.75±0.98, 2.33±0.59, 1.28±0.40, respectively) than non-orphans (1.44±0.36, 1.40±0.29, 1.31±0.36, 1.38±0.48, 2.12±0.43, 1.13±0.19, respectively)(P<0.05). (2) Orphans performed significant higher scores in emotional abuse, physical abuse, emotional neglect and physical neglect (1.88±0.69, 1.62±0.72, 2.89±0.94, 2.33±0.45, respectively) than non-orphans (1.58±0.67, 1.31±0.57, 2.41±1.07, 2.06±0.68, respectively) (P<0.05). (3) Orphans performed significant higher scores in self-blame and catastrophizing (12.34±4.41, 10.25±4.14) than non-orphans (10.86±2.42, 8.36±3.43) (P<0.05), while lower scores in positive refocusing and positive reappraisal (11.27±3.50, 12.55±4.75) than non-orphans (12.63±3.54, 14.45±3.40) (P<0.05). (4) The structural equation models which the cognitive emotion regulation mediated the relationship between health risk behavior and childhood trauma fitted well, and the mediating effects of positive regulation and negative regulation respectively accounted for 15.41% and 68.92% of the total effects. Conclusion The current study suggests that rural orphans tend to adopt negative cognitive emotion regulations to copy with their childhood traumas, thus increasing their risk of health risk behaviors. Key words: Rural orphan; Health risk behavior; Childhood trauma; Cognitive emotion regulation