The dangers of dwelling: An examination of the relationship between rumination and consumptive coping in survivors of childhood sexual abuse

Abstract

Childhood sexual abuse (CSA) is a non-specific risk factor for various maladaptive consummatory behaviours, such as binge eating and substance use. However, the mechanism by which CSA confers vulnerability to such behaviours remains unclear. CSA may lead to distress and then rumination, which in turn increases risk for engaging in consumption to cope. To test this theory, 603 community participants completed interview and self-report measures of sexual abuse, distress, rumination, and consumptive coping at three time points, one year apart. CSA survivors reported greater levels of distress, rumination and consumption (e.g., of food, alcohol, caffeine, nicotine, prescription and recreational drugs) to cope with distress than non-CSA survivors. In addition, results from structural equation modelling indicated that distress and rumination partially mediated the relationship between CSA and consumptive coping. These results suggest that CSA survivors may engage in maladaptive consummatory behaviours to manage distress and the psychological effects of rumination.

Keywords:

• Childhood sexual abuse
• Rumination
• Distress
• Consummatory behaviours
• Coping

Notes

¹We also ran SEM analyses separately for those who were abused for the first time during adulthood, and for all abuse survivors, and found the same pattern of results as reported here for CSA survivors. However, given our conceptual focus on the effects of CSA, and the superior goodness of fit indices obtained for the model with CSA survivors, we chose to report results only for those who experienced CSA.

²Although the reliability and magnitude of the difference between the CSA and non-CSA groups is greater for food consumption than for alcohol/drug consumption, this difference is not surprising given that far fewer people reported use of cigarettes and recreational/prescription drugs (i.e., 13–15%) than of everyday food substances (30–50%). This may be, in part, due to the fact that food and caffeine are perceived to be more acceptable substances with which to cope than are recreational or prescription drugs.