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Relationships between early life adversity and depressive symptoms in adolescents: a network analysis

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Abstract

Previous studies have demonstrated that depressive symptoms in adolescents were strongly associated with early life adversity (ELA). However, previous studies mainly considered the relationships between a single dimension of ELA and depressive symptoms, while the relationship between various types of ELA and depressive symptoms in adolescents needs further investigation. The present study investigated the interplay between depressive symptoms and different dimensions of ELA via network analysis. A total of 736 adolescents were recruited and answered questionnaires to assess their depressive symptoms and ELAs. The regularized partial correlation network analysis was utilized to examine the direct associations between ELAs and depressive symptoms after controlling for the influence of other variables. The network structure revealed that depressive symptoms were independently associated with each type of ELA, including childhood threat/harshness, childhood deprivation, and childhood unpredictability. Moreover, among all ELA variables, emotional abuse (i.e., threat/harshness dimension) was mostly associated with depressive symptoms and demonstrated the highest expected influence among all nodes in the network. Findings suggested that emotional abuse plays a key role in the relationship between ELA and depressive symptoms in adolescents.

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Data availability

The datasets are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (32100891) and the Natural Science Foundation of Hunan Province (2021JJ40347).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Hunan Normal University, 36 Lushan Road, Changsha, 410005, China

    Qin Zhou, Xin-Yang Li, Qun-ce Xu, Ming-yue Yang, Zhao-ying Wang & Rui-ting Zhang

  2. Cognition and Human Behavior Key Laboratory of Hunan Province, Hunan Normal University, Changsha, China

    Qin Zhou, Xin-Yang Li, Qun-ce Xu, Ming-yue Yang, Zhao-ying Wang & Rui-ting Zhang

  3. Center for Mind and Brain Sciences, Hunan Normal University, Changsha, China

    Qin Zhou & Rui-ting Zhang

  4. Physical Activity for Health Research Centre (PAHRC), Moray House School of Education and Sport, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland

    Chu-chu Li

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Contributions

QZ analyzed the data and wrote up the drafts of the paper. CCL commented the drafts critically and revised the drafts of the paper. XYL and QCX collected data. MYY and ZYW interpreted findings. RTZ generated the idea, designed the study, and interpreted the findings.

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Correspondence to Rui-ting Zhang.

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This study was approved by the Ethics Committee of the Hunan Normal University.

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Informed consent was obtained from all participants in the study.

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Zhou, Q., Li, Cc., Li, XY. et al. Relationships between early life adversity and depressive symptoms in adolescents: a network analysis. Curr Psychol 43, 16649–16656 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-024-05638-w

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