Poster #65 - Threat, Deprivation, and Psychological Distress: The Impact of Family and Community-Level Childhood Adversities

• In Event: 2-110 - Poster Session 07
  In Poster Session: PS 07 Section - Developmental Psychopathology

Integrative Statement

Introduction: Adverse childhood experiences are well-documented risk factors for internalizing and externalizing patterns of distress across the lifespan (Cohen, Menon, Shorey, Le, & Temple, 2017). However, despite robust findings concerning the harmful effects of these adverse events, questions remain for how to best characterize the relation between childhood adversities and subsequent well-being. Specifically, past research methodologies remain limited in how to best study outcomes following exposure to multiple traumatic events (i.e., polyvictimization; Finkelhor, Ormrod, & Turner, 1997). McLaughlin (2016) addressed these limitations by hypothesizing that childhood adversities across two dimensions of threat (i.e., exposure to events involving harm or threat of harm) and deprivation (i.e., experiences that involve the absence of expected cognitive and social inputs that results in reduced opportunities for learning) may lead to different developmental risk pathways.
The present study used McLaughlin’s (2016) trauma-informed hierarchical model to test if experiences of threat and deprivation confer distinct patterns of risk across adversities experienced at the family and community levels. This study was motivated by Bronfenbrenner’s (1994) Ecological Systems Theory and findings indicating adverse experiences can confer unique impacts depending on the setting in which it is experienced (i.e., family vs. community; Lynch & Cicchetti, 1998). Therefore, we examined whether dimensions of adversity across distinct settings (i.e., family threat, community threat, family deprivation, community deprivation) differentially predicted positive (i.e., optimism, post-traumatic growth) and negative (i.e., post-traumatic symptoms) outcomes in a sample of late adolescents.
Method: University students (N=257; mean age=19.3, SD=1.91) completed questionnaires at baseline and a follow-up assessment three months later. Questionnaires assessed trauma exposure history, post-traumatic growth, optimism, and post-traumatic symptoms (see Table 1 for measures). Univariate and multivariate linear regression models were run to assess how different indicators of adversity uniquely predicted our psychological outcomes.
Results: For optimism, results indicated that family threat (β=-.13, SE=.06, t(248)=-2.17, p<.05) and community deprivation (β=-.08, SE=.04, t(248)=-2.03, p<.05) uniquely predicted optimism at baseline. When controlling for baseline post-traumatic growth, results revealed family threat (β=.88, SE=.32, t(180)=2.78, p<.05), community threat (β=-2.76, SE=1.11, t(181)=-2.45, p<.05) and community deprivation (β=1.10, SE=.39, t(181)=2.79, p<) predicted post-traumatic growth at follow-up in the independent model. Finally, for post-traumatic symptoms, results showed only family threat (β=.73, SE=.22, t(249)=3.27, p<.01) to be predictive of baseline post-traumatic symptoms in the simultaneous model.
Discussion: Results suggest that qualitative differences exist within the threat and deprivation dimensions of adversity in regards to optimism, post-traumatic growth, and post-traumatic symptoms. Specifically, our results suggest that traumatic experiences at the community level (e.g., community violence) may confer different outcomes compared to those experienced in the family setting (e.g., maltreatment). McLaughlin’s (2016) theoretical dimensional model of operationalizing and conceptualizing childhood adversities provides relief to past limitations in the developmental traumatology literature, but may need to be adjusted to account for whether trauma occurs at the family or community level. By further exploring the unique impact of childhood adversities on psychosocial development more can be understood about the mechanisms that relate distinct adverse experiences to specific psychological outcomes.

Authors

• Kari Nicole Thomsen, 1. University of Massachusetts at Amherst; 2. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  Presenting Author

• Joe Cohen, University of Illinois- Urbana Champaign
  Non-Presenting Author