Childhood adversity and adolescent acting-out behaviors: the mediating role of mentalizing difficulties and epistemic vigilance.

Autor: Malcorps S; Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, KU Leuven, Tiensestraat 102, PO Box 3720, 3000, Leuven, Belgium. saskia.malcorps@kuleuven.be., Vliegen N; Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, KU Leuven, Tiensestraat 102, PO Box 3720, 3000, Leuven, Belgium., Luyten P; Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, KU Leuven, Tiensestraat 102, PO Box 3720, 3000, Leuven, Belgium.; Research Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology, University College London, London, UK.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: European child & adolescent psychiatry [Eur Child Adolesc Psychiatry] 2024 Jul; Vol. 33 (7), pp. 2153-2162. Date of Electronic Publication: 2023 Oct 03.
DOI: 10.1007/s00787-023-02302-9
Abstrakt: Childhood adversity is a well-established risk factor for adolescent acting-out behaviors such as self-harm, bingeing, substance abuse, and aggressive behavior. From a mentalizing perspective, acting-out behaviors are understood as resulting from a combination of impairments in mentalizing and epistemic vigilance that are a consequence of childhood adversity. Yet, few studies have investigated these assumptions. The current study investigated the potential mediating role of mentalizing impairments and epistemic vigilance in the relationship between childhood adversity and acting-out behaviors in adolescents, oversampled for risk status for psychopathology (N = 451, mean age = 15.40 years). Structural equation modeling showed a strong, direct relationship between childhood adversity and acting-out behaviors, confirming the importance of traumatic childhood experiences for adolescent acting-out behaviors. This relationship was partially mediated by both mentalizing difficulties and epistemic vigilance, explaining about 40% of the total variance. These results support the importance of focusing on strengthening mentalizing abilities and lowering epistemic hypervigilance in psychotherapeutic work with adolescents who have experienced childhood trauma.
(© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany.)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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