The relationship between childhood trauma and health risk behavior in rural orphans:mediating effect of cognitive emotion regulation

Xianhua LIU

ABSTRACT

Objective To explore the status of health risk behaviors and its relationships with child-hood trauma and cognitive emotion regulation in rural orphans. Methods Totally 56 orphans and 56 non-or-phans in rural middle school were surveyed with the adolescent health related risky behavior inventory (AHRBI),the childhood trauma questionnaire (CTQ) and the cognitive emotion regulation questionnaire-Chinese version ( CERQ-C) . Results ( 1) Orphans performed significant higher scores in aggression&vi-olence,rule & law breaking,suicide & self-injury,smoking & drinking,health-compromising behaviors and uprotected sex of AHRBI (1. 67±0. 64,1. 63±0. 58,1. 53±0. 67,1. 75±0. 98,2. 33±0. 59,1. 28±0. 40,re-spectively) than non-orphans (1. 44±0. 36,1. 40±0. 29,1. 31±0. 36,1. 38±0. 48,2. 12±0. 43,1. 13±0. 19, respectively)(P<0. 05). (2) Orphans performed significant higher scores in emotional abuse,physical a-buse,emotional neglect and physical neglect (1. 88±0. 69,1. 62±0. 72,2. 89±0. 94,2. 33±0. 45,respective-ly) than non-orphans (1. 58±0. 67,1. 31±0. 57,2. 41±1. 07,2. 06±0. 68,respectively) (P<0. 05). (3) Orphans performed significant higher scores in self-blame and catastrophizing (12. 34±4. 41,10. 25±4. 14) than non-orphans (10. 86±2. 42,8. 36±3. 43) (P<0. 05),while lower scores in positive refocusing and posi-tive reappraisal (11. 27±3. 50,12. 55±4. 75) than non-orphans (12. 63±3. 54,14. 45±3. 40) (P<0. 05).( 4) The structural equation models which the cognitive emotion regulation mediated the relationship between health risk behavior and childhood trauma fitted well,and the mediating effects of positive regulation and neg-ative regulation respectively accounted for 15. 41％ and 68. 92％ of the total effects. Conclusion The cur-rent study suggests that rural orphans tend to adopt negative cognitive emotion regulations to copy with their childhood traumas,thus increasing their risk of health risk behaviors.