Childhood trauma, emotion regulation, and depressive symptoms in parents and adolescents: Actor-partner interdependence analysis.

Abstract

Parental childhood trauma exerts profound impacts on both their own and their offspring's psychopathological problems such as depressive symptoms. The underlying mechanisms of these effects, particularly from the perspective of parent-child interdependence, still need further exploration. This study adopted the actor-partner interdependence model to investigate the associations between parental childhood trauma and parental and adolescent depressive symptoms, and the mediating roles of parental and adolescent emotion regulation difficulties in the relations. This study included 125 eligible parent-adolescent dyads from Northwest China, with data collected at two time points across a 1-year interval. Parents aged 33-69 years (Mage = 41.19, SD = 7.19, 58% mothers) were invited to complete the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire and Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale at T1 and the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale at T2, and adolescents aged 13-16 (Mage = 14.41, SD = 0.53, 50% girls) were asked to complete the face-word Stroop task assessing emotion regulation difficulties at T1 and the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale at T2. Results showed that parental childhood trauma at T1 predicted both parental and adolescent depressive symptoms at T2. In addition, parental childhood trauma at T1 affected parental depressive symptoms at T2 only via parental emotion regulation difficulties at T1, and parental childhood trauma at T1 affected adolescent depressive symptoms at T2 via both adolescent and parental emotion regulation difficulties at T1. These findings suggest an actor-partner interdependence mechanism underlying the associations between parental childhood trauma and their own and offspring's depressive symptoms. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).