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Abstract
Purpose: This study examined a developmental model that links affect-regulation difficulties in childhood with three dimensions of alexithymia in adolescence (difficulty identifying feelings, difficulty describing feelings, and externally oriented thinking) and substance use and depression in adulthood, while accounting for cumulative contextual risk in childhood, and testing potential gender moderation.
Methods: Multiple group path analyses were conducted using data from the Northern Finland Birth Cohort 1986 (N = 6963). Analyses used data collected during prenatal/birth, childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood periods.
Results: Our examination of early precursors for alexithymia indicated that the associations of affect-regulation problems in childhood with alexithymia were stronger for girls, potentially putting girls with affect-regulation difficulties in childhood at higher risk for developing alexithymia in adolescence. The associations of cumulative contextual risk in childhood with alexithymia, substance use disorder, and depression diagnosis in adulthood were significant for both girls and boys. Our findings in regard to substance use and depression disorders revealed that alexithymia in adolescence predicted depression diagnosis in adulthood, particularly due to a contribution from the alexithymia domain of ‘difficulties identifying feelings.’ However, none of the alexithymia domains was directly associated with substance use disorder in adulthood.
Conclusions: Our study contributes to research that links alexithymia with difficulties in affect regulation and cumulative contextual risk in childhood, yielding findings that may be relevant for preventive interventions.
Acknowledgments
The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the funding agencies. The funders played no role in the research design, analysis, or writing and submission process. With support from the grants, all authors contributed to drafting the manuscript.
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Notes on contributors
Irina Patwardhan
Irina Patwardhan is a Research Scientist at the Boys Town Translational Research Center for Child and Family Studies. She earned her Ph.D. in Educational Psychology at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. Her research interests include socio-emotional development of children and adolescents at-risk for positive psychosocial and academic adjustment.
W. Alex Mason
W. Alex Mason is Director of Research at the Boys Town Translational Research Center for Child and Family Studies. He received his Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the University of Nevada–Reno. His major research interests include the developmental etiology and family-based prevention of adolescent and young adult substance misuse and co-occurring problems. He also has interests in longitudinal and intervention-related methods and analytic techniques.
Mary B. Chmelka
Mary B. Chmelka is Director of Data Support at the Boys Town Translational Research Center for Child and Family Studies. She has over 20 years of data collection and data management experience at Boys Town, implementing a variety of methods with a range of participants (e.g., youth, caregivers, agency staff). Her research interests focus on problem and positive development of at-risk youth in residential treatment and general population youth. She also has interests in longitudinal data analytic techniques.
Jukka Savolainen
Jukka Savolainen is Research Professor at the Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, where he serves as the Director of the National Archive of Criminal Justice, a topical data archive within the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research. Dr. Savolainen's research is focused on etiological investigations of crime, delinquency, and adolescent problem behavior.
Jouko Miettunen
Jouko Miettunen is Professor of clinical epidemiology at the Center for Life Course Health Research, University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland. He is also working as an Academy Research Fellow on risk factors for schizophrenia. He earned a M.Sc. in statistics from the University of Oulu, Finland in 1998, a M.Phil. in epidemiology from the University of Cambridge, UK in 2003, and a Ph.D. in psychiatry from the University of Oulu, Finland in 2004. He has over 190 publications, primarily focused on schizophrenia, temperament, and medical statistics.
Marjo-Riitta Järvelin
Marjo-Riitta Järvelin, MD, PhD, is Professor and Chair in Life Course Epidemiology at Imperial College London, UK, is Professor at the University of Oulu, and Consultant at the University Hospital Oulu. She earned her MD from the University of Oulu with a specialization in pediatrics, a MSc in Environmental Epidemiology and Policy from the University of London, and a PhD in Epidemiology in Medical Science from the University of Oulu. Dr. Järvelin has been managing large-scale population based studies for over 25 years and is director of the Northern Finland Birth Cohort research program. Her research interests include the genetic and early life environmental origins of multi-factorial disease and disorders.