Interrelationships between childhood maltreatment, emotion regulation strategies, and internalizing problems in Chinese college students: A network analysis approach.

OBJECTIVE

Childhood maltreatment (CM) and maladaptive emotion regulation (ER) are the distal and proximal factors associated with internalizing problems, respectively. However, previous studies on their relationships have often overlooked the co-occurrence of different types of CM and the concurrent use of various ER strategies. To address these gaps, this study aimed to investigate the associations among CM, ER strategies, and internalizing problems using network analysis.

METHOD: This study involved 805 college students (438 female, Mage = 21.21 ± 1.80 years). Self-reported measures were used to assess CM, ER strategies, depressive symptoms, and anxiety symptoms. Undirected network analysis was employed to identify key connections among these factors. Bayesian network analysis was utilized to estimate a directed acyclic graph to explore the most likely putative causal associations.

RESULTS

The results indicated that (a) emotional maltreatment was primarily associated with depressive symptoms, whereas physical and sexual abuse were predominantly linked to anxiety symptoms; (b) depressive and anxiety symptoms were related to maladaptive rather than adaptive ER strategies; (c) the impact of CM on ER strategies predominantly manifested in behavioral rather than cognitive ER strategies; and (d) emotional abuse played the most crucial role in the directed networks.

CONCLUSIONS

These results clarified the interrelationship among CM, ER strategies, and internalizing problems, emphasizing the significant role of emotional abuse in internalizing problems and maladaptive ER. This provided valuable guidance for clinical interventions, school psychological counseling, and family education. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).