Saturday, 15 January 2005 - 12:00 PM

This presentation is part of: Poster Session II

Childhood Trauma and Coping in a Sample of Mothers Living in the Community

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to describe the direct and indirect effects of childhood trauma on psychological and substance use problems using structural equation modeling in a sample of mothers living in the community. Epidemiological studies have established the co-morbidity of trauma history, substance use disorders and psychological disorders. This study examines the role of education and avoidant coping on substance use and psychological distress.

Methods: Data from 314 mothers were collected during a face to face interview as part of a longitudinal research study to examine the effects of fetal exposure to cocaine. All respondents are mothers of a four-year old child who was enrolled in the on-going study. The study used the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ) to gather information about childhood abuse/neglect. The CTQ captures five domains: physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, physical neglect, and emotional neglect. The avoidant coping was measured with three subscales of the COPE (Carver et al., 1989), including denial, behavioral disengagement, and mental disengagement. Education was measured with self-reported number of years of education. Psychological distress was measured with the Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI), which yields nine subscales (somatization, obsessive-compulsive, interpersonal sensitivity, depression, anxiety, hostility, phobic anxiety, paranoid ideation, and psychoticism). Substance abuse was measured with alcohol and drug subscales from the Addiction Severity Index (ASI). Structural equation modeling, with AMOS and full-information maximum likelihood (FIML), was used to simultaneously estimate the direct and indirect impact of childhood trauma on psychological and substance abuse problems.

Results: Childhood Trauma significantly predicted lower levels of education (standardized path coefficient (SPC) = - .17), severe substance use (SPC= .21), and more psychological distress (SPC= .29). Further, childhood trauma had an indirect effect on substance abuse through education and an additional indirect effect on substance abuse and psychological distress through education and avoidant coping. Lower level of education was significantly related to more avoidant coping strategies (SPC= - .15) and severe substance use (SPC=- .32). Also, there were indirect effects of education on substance abuse and psychological distress through avoidant coping strategies. Avoidant coping strategies were significantly correlated with substance use (SPC= .40) and psychological distress (SPC= .44). There were no statistically significant relationships between substance abuse and psychological distress or between childhood trauma and avoidant coping. Forty percent of the total variance in psychological distress and 18% in substance abuse were accounted for by the model. Fit statistics indicated an acceptable fit to the data (c² (df=161) =340.2, CFI= .95, TLI= .93, RMSEA= .06 (CI90 = .05, .07)).

Implications for practice: This study shows that education and the use of avoidant coping moderate the impact of childhood trauma on substance abuse and psychological distress. A higher level of education is related to less avoidant coping strategies, which is related to less substance abuse and lower psychological distress. These findings indicate supportive educational strategies for children exposed to trauma to assist them to stay in school and to teach them active rather than avoidant coping skills.

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