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

Background: Most people will experience a traumatic event in their lifetime, but only a subset (<10%) will develop posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

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.

Adult attachment anxiety moderates the relation between self-reported childhood maltreatment and borderline personality disorder features.

Childhood maltreatment is one of many risk factors for borderline personality disorder (BPD). However, not all individuals with BPD report histories of childhood maltreatment. Therefore, it is necessary to identify factors that contextualize the relation between childhood maltreatment and BPD features.