Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are related to a variety of detrimental outcomes, including psychopathology and criminal activity. Adolescents and other youth who have engaged in sexually abusive behaviors are a high-risk population in which ACEs are exceptionally common and interrelated. However, the experiences of adversity faced by these youth are not homogenous, and exploring further aspects and details of ACEs may assist in better understanding the etiology of problematic outcomes such as psychopathology and criminal activity in these populations. The deleterious impact of polyvictimization may be one facet of adversity worth considering, as the persistence of maltreatment, presence of multiple perpetrators, and relationship to perpetrator(s) have been linked to poorer outcomes. Regression analyses were used to examine the relationship between ACEs and psychopathology and criminal activity in a sample of adolescents who have engaged in problematic sexual behavior. Incorporating facets of polyvictimization better explained several of such outcomes.

Previous research suggests that adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) can greatly impact a child’s physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing later in life. ACE exposure has been associated with lower levels of empathy in the literature. Spirituality is often associated with a number of positive outcomes, including those associated with empathy, like prosocial behaviors. The present study examines spirituality as a buffer against reduced empathy in those with exposure to adverse events in childhood. Participants for this study were recruited through the SONA research platform at East Tennessee State University as part of a larger research project, the REACH (Religions, Emotions, and Current Health) study. Results of this study did not support the working hypotheses that we would find a negative correlation between ACEs and empathy, as well as a moderation relationship via spirituality between ACEs and empathy. However, we did find that empathy was positively associated with spirituality, and ACEs were negatively associated with spirituality. Future research should dig deeper into the relationship between ACEs and empathy, as well as search for other possible protective factors for the effects of ACEs.

Adverse and traumatic childhood experiences (e.g., ACEs) are inversely linked to negative outcomes in adulthood, including lower couple relationship functioning. Clinical research and practice have incorporated implications of ACEs, however much less consideration of ACEs has been given in community-based couple relationship education (CRE). This study explores dyadic effects of ACEs and mindfulness, a potential resilience factor and modifiable skill, on couple relationship quality in a diverse sample of CRE study participants before program start. Results indicate actor and partner effects for ACEs and mindfulness on relationship quality. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

Decades of research on parenting and emotion socialization have yielded consistent results that more supportive, warm, emotion-focused, and balanced parenting results in better long-term outcomes for children, particularly outcomes related to internalizing and externalizing symptoms. Further, in the context of childhood adversity, supportive and sensitive relationships and environment appear to protect against the development of internalizing symptomology. However, limited knowledge exists regarding these processes and their outcomes for children in rural Appalachia. The current project aimed to explore parenting, emotion socialization, adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), and internalizing and externalizing symptoms in college students raised in rural Appalachia. The sample consists of 591 students attending college in the Appalachian Highlands who completed self-report measures of retrospective parenting styles (i.e., how their parents parented them as a child), emotion socialization (i.e., emotion expression and environment in their home as a child), adverse childhood experiences (i.e., adverse experiences occurring for them prior to the age of 18), and religious support (i.e., experiences of being supported or unsupported by religious group as a child). Participants also completed self-report measures of current internalizing (i.e., depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms) and externalizing (i.e., alcohol use, drug use) symptoms. To explore possible avenues of risk and resilience, simple moderation analyses were conducted in SPSS using Hayes’ PROCESS 4.0 Macro to explore if supportive or unsupportive environments moderate the relationship between ACEs and internalizing or externalizing symptoms. In both supportive and unsupportive emotional environment models for internalizing symptoms, the interactions were not significant, indicating no presence of moderation. However, in both supportive and unsupportive emotional environment models for externalizing symptoms, the interactions were significant, suggesting moderation. Further, authoritarian parenting also significantly moderated the relationship between ACEs and externalizing symptoms. Specifically, in a sample of students attending college in the Appalachian Highlands, in the context of high childhood adversity, growing up in a family marked by discouraging the displays of negative emotions and punitive parenting in childhood appear to be protective factors against substance use in adulthood, but not against depression or anxiety. Further, religious social support from childhood was not a protective factor in the context of ACEs and mental health outcomes. These results are inconsistent with much of the parenting and emotion socialization literature and suggest that Appalachian families may have different adaptive processes of parenting and emotion socialization. These results offer one piece of a much larger puzzle to understanding avenues for risk and resilience for children and families in Appalachia. As such, the results will be discussed in the context of Appalachian culture with a focus on further exploration of these processes and their implications.

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Conspiracy theory beliefs have become ubiquitous within our society. One cannot partake in any form of media without confronting different conspiracy theories, such as beliefs that the Earth is flat, that birds are not real, that the moon landing was fake, or that vaccines cause autism spectrum disorder. Conspiracy theories are beliefs that revolve around false explanations of public and political events concerning a secret organization with malicious intent. What makes people vulnerable to conspiracy theory beliefs? Prior research indicates that people often adopt conspiracy beliefs in an attempt to reduce feelings of anxiety, uncertainty, and threat. Unfortunately, prior research also suggests that conspiracy theory beliefs might not relieve these negative emotional states. As a result, one might conclude that conspiracy theory beliefs are misguided attempts to regulate one’s emotional state during times of anxiety and uncertainty. The goal for the current research was to gain a greater understanding of who may be more susceptible to conspiracy theory beliefs. As prior research has shown that adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) often predict poorer emotion regulation, we wanted to explore whether ACEs may predict conspiracy theory beliefs as explained through emotion dysregulation. In this exploratory research, we recruited 719 participants online through Sona at East Tennessee State University (Mage= 19.98) and asked participants to complete two scales to measure conspiracy theory beliefs, the Generic Conspiracist Beliefs Scale (GCB) and the Conspiracy Mentality Scale (CM), as well as self-report measures of ACEs and emotion dysregulation. Results showed that ACEs did not directly predict conspiracy theory beliefs; however, when emotional dysregulation was included as a mediator, ACEs predicted conspiracy theory beliefs on both GCB and CM scales. This suggests that people who indicated experiencing more ACEs within the first 18 years of life tended to score higher in emotion dysregulation and will have more difficulty regulating their own emotions when it comes to social and environmental problems. Because of this, individuals who experienced more ACEs may rely on external factors and maladaptive coping strategies, such as conspiracy theory beliefs, to regulate their negative emotional states. Although ACE scores were not a direct determining factor in conspiracy theory beliefs, they can be used to reveal and better understand other maladaptive traits and the possibility of developing psychological disorders in the future. As this research was exploratory, future research will need to confirm these findings, ideally with a more diverse sample in age, race and educational background. Despite these limitations, the current study aids in our understanding about who may be more susceptible to engaging in conspiracy theory beliefs and can inform about possible interventions in the future.

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No description available.

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are linked to risky health behaviors (e.g., alcohol, substance use), chronic health conditions (e.g., diabetes, cancer), higher medical costs, and early death. Children exposed to trauma are seven times more likely to develop a substance use disorder in adolescence or adulthood compared to those who were not exposed. However, not all children who experience ACEs will grow up to have detrimental outcomes. One aspect of parenting that may be particularly relevant for promoting risk or resilience in the context of adversity is parental emotion socialization (ES). Despite the established link between ACEs and substance use, no research, to date, has examined whether ES serves as a risk or protective factor in the context of ACEs and subsequent substance use. As such, the present study aims to fill this gap by examining ES as a moderator of the relationship between ACEs and substance use. Participants (N=550, age M=20.4, SD=4.7) were recruited from SONA systems: a university operated online platform where students may choose to voluntarily participate in a variety of self-report research studies in exchange for course credit or extra credit. The present project comes from a larger study called the Religion, Emotions and Current Health (REACH) study. Retrospective measures regarding the participants' adverse childhood experiences and their parent’s emotion socialization behavior include The Adverse Childhood Experiences Survey (ACEs) and The Coping with Children’s Negative Emotions Scale (CCNES). Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) and the Drug Abuse Screening Test (DAST-10) was used to assess for current substance use. All analyses will be conducted using the R package for statistical computing. Bivariate correlations will be examined for all variables using Pearson’s correlation coefficient method. A hierarchical multiple regression analysis will be implemented to determine if parental emotion socialization moderates the relationship between childhood adversity and substance use. The estimated multiple regression formula, ( Y) ̂= i + b1X + b2M + b3XM + ey; where Y ̂ = outcome (i.e., current substance use), X = the predictor variable (i.e., ACEs), M = primary moderator variable (i.e., parental emotion socialization from childhood), and b3XM= interaction will be applied with R’s base lm(Y~X*Z) function. The proposed study will test two main hypotheses: 1) ACEs from childhood will act as a predictor for current substance use in adulthood (as reflected in the literature) 2) ES will act as a moderator on the relationship between ACEs and substance use; however, the nature of this interaction will vary depending on the type of ES behaviors. Specifically, the link between ACEs in childhood and substance use in early adulthood will be exacerbated by a childhood marked by high levels of non-supportive ES; whereas, the link between ACEs in childhood and substance use in early adulthood will be lessened (buffered) by a childhood marked by high levels of supportive ES.

Introduction: The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study demonstrated that childhood maltreatment has a profound impact on adult health, leading to psychopathology, continued victimization, risky behaviors, chronic disease, suicide, and premature death. Persons involved in the forensic mental health system are characterized by a greater degree of cumulative risk – exposed to greater and more prolonged ACEs during critical developmental periods who also face disproportionate exposure to psychosocial and economic deprivation, limited health care access, and other such factors that compound lifetime health concerns. In the current study, we seek to build upon emerging knowledge of ACEs in forensic mental health consumers by examining clusters of persons differentially exposed to ACEs in relation to a range of health and behavioral outcomes. Method: Archival data were used; participants were randomly sampled who had been admitted to the facility and released between 2005 and 2013. Of 250 possible participants identified by the facility’s Quality Management team, data were collected and coded for the resulting 180 persons. Records included admission and discharge summaries, criminal background records and associated pre-sentencing reports, and annual medical, social services, and psychiatric evaluations. Data pertaining to ACEs and characteristics of the early environment, mental and physical health, and criminality and aggression were coded for each participant. For this presentation, we examined outcomes related to adult physical health (e.g., chronic disease conditions, head injuries), mental health (e.g., suicidality, psychiatric admission history, psychiatric diagnoses), and criminogenic behavior (e.g., characteristics of arrest history, onset of aggression) using a series of logistic regression analyses, with differing ACE risk bands as ordinal predictors of our outcome variables. These include persons with an ACE score of 0-1 (40.6%, n = 73), 2-3 (27.2%, n = 49), 4-5 (16.1%, n = 29), and 6+ (16.1%, n = 29). Results & discussion: None of the outcomes for medical history were significantly different across the risk bands, potentially due to high occurrences among the sample, with over 79% reporting a chronic disease. The relationship between risk band and sexual arrest history was significant (p = .045), with those in lower risk bands more likely to be arrested for a sexual offense. This may be due to the additional planning and executive functioning required to engage in these types of crime. There was a significant relationship between risk bands and age at first arrest (p = .032), with the highest risk band arrested at younger ages. There was also a significant relationship for age at first aggression (p < .001) and age at first psychiatric hospitalization (p < .001) with highest risk bands demonstrating aggressive behaviors and being hospitalized at earlier ages. Relationships between self-harm history (p < .001), PTSD diagnosis (p < .001), and BPD diagnosis (p < .001) were significantly related to ACE risk bands. Implications and future directions will be discussed.