The roles of attachment and emotion dysregulation in the association between childhood maltreatment and PTSD in an inner-city sample

Abstract Background Most people will experience a traumatic event in their lifetime, but only a subset ( Objective To facilitate prevention and intervention of PTSD, it is important to understand how risk and resilience factors interact with one another to explain individual differences in risk for PTSD, especially in underprivileged groups, who often experience greater burden of trauma and PTSD. Method The current study utilized multiple and moderated regression to examine the relation between childhood maltreatment and adulthood PTSD risk in the context of various attachment patterns and emotion dysregulation in a sample (n = 856) of mostly low-income, African American participants. Results Moderation analysis indicated that the strongest association between self-reported childhood maltreatment and PTSD symptoms was manifest in participants reporting the highest levels of both attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance (b = 0.22, 95% CI [0.15, 0.29], p  Conclusions These findings suggest more secure attachment may buffer against the deleterious effects of childhood maltreatment, and both attachment difficulties and emotion dysregulation serve as robust correlates of adulthood PTSD.