Lina Gervinskaitė-Paulaitienė, Austėja Marija Baškytė, Neringa Čėnaitė, Lina Matutytė, Marija Šiaučiūnaitė, Rasa Barkauskienė
Abstract
Child abuse and neglect is a global public health problem that is linked with various negative consequences such as poor emotional regulation, psychosomatic complaints. However, understanding of these links during early adolescence is incomplete. The goal of this research was to evaluate the association between adverse childhood experiences, emotional regulation and somatic complaints during early adolescence. 565 11–14 years old adolescents participated in the study and completed the Childhood Experiences Questionnaire, the Emotional Regulation Questionnaire (ERICA), the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire for Children and Adolescents (ERQ-CA) and the Youth Self-Report (YSR/11–18). The data from this research showed that 23,7% of the participants reported having experienced violence in childhood, 7,7% had somatic complaints attributed to a risk group. Adolescents who reported adverse childhood experiences were characterized by weaker emotional regulation, rarer use of cognitive reappraisal strategy, tendency to use expressive suppression and more frequent somatic complaints. Young adolescents who had significant somatic difficulties also showed worse emotional regulation. The child abuse sufferers expressed more somatic complaints without any defined medical condition than non-sufferers. Perceived childhood abuse, worse emotional control, emotion understanding and rarer use of expressive suppression predicted more somatic complaints in young adolescents.
Keyword(s): adverse childhood experiences; violence; neglect; early adolescence; emotion regulation; somatic complaints.
DOI: 10.5200/sm-hs.2017.032
Full Text: PDF