A longitudinal study of childhood trauma impacting on negative emotional symptoms among college students: a moderated mediation analysis

Meditation and interoception: a conceptual framework for the narrative and experiential self

The concept of the self is complex and there is no consensus on what the self is. However, there are emerging patterns in the literature that point to two different selves, the narrative and experiential self. The narrative self refers to a conceptual or representational knowledge of the self that extends across time and manifests in self-reflection and personality assessments. The experiential self refers to first-person perception, moment-to-moment awareness, embodiment, and a sense of agency. These two selves are reliably linked to two distinct neural circuits, the default mode network (DMN) and the insula and salience network (SN). One of the consistent themes in the meditative and mindfulness literature is a change in the perspective of the self. In this paper, I will review how meditation alters those neural circuits providing a plausible mechanism that can explain the changes in the self. I also propose a rudimentary conceptual framework to account for some of the mixed results found throughout meditation literature.

The role of resilience in the development of depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder after trauma in children and adolescents

This investigation, conducted within the Texas Childhood Trauma Research Network, investigated the prospective relationships between resiliency and emergent internalizing symptoms among trauma-exposed youth. The cohort encompassed 1262 youth, aged 8-20, from twelve health-related institutions across Texas, who completed assessments at baseline and one- and six-month follow-ups for resiliency, symptoms of depression, generalized anxiety, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and other demographic and clinical characteristics. At baseline, greater resilience was positively associated with older age, male (vs female) sex assigned at birth, and history of mental health treatment. Unadjusted for covariates, higher baseline resilience was associated with greater prospective depression and PTSD symptoms but not anxiety symptoms. Upon adjusting for demographic and clinical factors, higher baseline resilience was no longer associated with depression, PTSD, or anxiety symptoms. Our analyses demonstrate that the predictive value of resilience on psychopathology is relatively small compared to more readily observable clinical and demographic factors. These data suggest a relatively minor prospective role of resilience in protecting against internalizing symptoms among trauma-exposed youth and highlight the importance of controlling for relevant youth characteristics when investigating a protective effect of resilience on internalizing symptoms.

Trauma, early life stress, and mindfulness in adulthood

This article is a review that was inspired by recent studies investigating the effects of childhood trauma or early life stress (ELS) and mindfulness in adulthood. One recent study found that some forms of abuse and neglect led to higher scores in several subscales of a self-report measure of mindfulness. The authors concluded that some forms of ELS can help cultivate certain aspects of mindfulness in adulthood. However, and in contrast to this recent finding, much of the extant literature investigating ELS and trauma are linked to emotional dysregulation, alexithymia, and a host of psychopathologies in adulthood which makes the results of this study surprising. Central to the mindfulness literature is cultivating an open, non-reactive, or non-judgment awareness of inner experiences which are important for emotional regulation. In this paper, I review some of the effects of trauma or ELS on critical neural circuits linked to mindfulness, interoception, attachment, and alexithymia which I hope may clarify some of the conflicting findings from this study and throughout the literature and provide additional context and a framework that may inform research investigating these two constructs going forward.

Relationship between early-life stress and trait mindfulness in adulthood: a correlational study

BACKGROUND

To investigate the relationship between early-life stress (ELS) and the trait mindfulness level in workers.

METHOD

This study is quantitative cross-sectional and correlational research with a sample of 929 workers from a Brazilian public university. ELS and mindfulness assessment was performed using the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ) and the Five-Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire-BR (FFMQ-BR), respectively. The data were submitted to correlation tests adopting a significance level of .05 and a multivariate linear regression analysis.

RESULTS

50.0% of the participants obtained a score indicative of ELS exposure in at least one subtype among the five proposed by the CTQ, with emotional neglect predominating (63.0%). The group not exposed to emotional abuse had higher scores in the "describe-positive formulation" and "non-reactivity to inner experience" facets. Those that scored for physical abuse had higher values in "acting with awareness-autopilot". However, the group exposed to sexual abuse obtained the highest score in the "acting with awareness-autopilot" and "acting with awareness-distraction" facets. The correlation between FFMQ-BR and CTQ overall scores showed a weak correlation with statistical significance. The multiple linear revealed that the facets of mindfulness were significantly associated by at least one type of early stress; however, no significant association was found between CTQ and FFMQ-BR overall results.

CONCLUSION

The results showed that emotional regulation might have effectively occurred in this specific population, even with the presence of some childhood trauma.