Co-occurring childhood maltreatment exposure and depressive symptoms in adulthood: Testing differential effects of stress dysregulation and perceived stress

Abstract

Objectives: Objectives were to explore: 1) the association between sub-groups with different multi-type childhood maltreatment exposures and depressive symptoms in late adulthood, and 2) the mediating effects of dysregulated physiological stress system function and perceived stress in midlife on the aforementioned associations.

Methods: Data come from the Biomarker project (n = 1,053) of the Midlife Development in the United States study. Latent profile analysis was used to identify sub-groups with differing childhood maltreatment type and chronicity. We then test our mediation hypothesis using a product of coefficients method procedure.

Results: Two vulnerable sub-groups were identified (Class 2: Emotional and physical maltreatment class, n = 52, and Class 3: Sexual abuse class, n = 79) along with a normative sub-group (Class 1: Normative class, n = 922) comprising of a majority of adults. Both vulnerable sub-groups had higher levels of perceived stress in late adulthood. Perceived stress mediated the association between both vulnerable sub-groups and depressive symptoms. Physiological stress dysregulation mediated the association only between the emotional and physical maltreatment class and depressive symptoms in late adulthood.

Conclusion: Therapeutic approaches targeted at prevention of perceived stress for both vulnerable sub-groups identified in this study and those targeting physiological dysregulation in addition for the emotional and physical maltreatment class could be critical for depressive symptom recovery.

Keywords:

• Depressive symptoms
• childhood maltreatment
• physiological stress dysregulation
• perceived stress

Disclosure statement

The authors report no conflict of interest.

Ethical approval

The study uses pre-existing data from the MIDUS study that was reviewed and deemed as a category 4 exemption for Human Subjects Research by the Purdue University IRB. All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee.

Data availability

https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/ICPSR/studies/29282

Additional information

Funding

Dr. Marceau was supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (K01DA039288, Marceau).