ArticlePsychology research and behavior management2020
Psychological Capital Mediating the Relationship Between Childhood Trauma and Alexithymia in Chinese Medical Students: A Cross-Sectional Study.
Article in Psychology research and behavior management, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 20 citations in OpenAlex.
- Alexithymia as a mediator between adverse childhood events and the development of psychopathology: a meta-analysis.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2024Pooled it
- Childhood trauma and malevolent creativity: the mediating role of positive psychological capital and gender differences.BMC psychology · 2025Article
- Childhood emotional abuse and suicidal ideation in college students: exploring the mediating role of alexithymia and the moderating effect of physical exercise.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2025Article
- Mental Imagery in the Relationship between Alexithymia and Parental Psychological Control.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Prevalence and associated factors of alexithymia among medical students: A cross-sectional study from Saudi Arabia.Neurosciences (Riyadh, Saudi Arabia) · 2022Article
- Mindfulness for mediating the relationship between self-control and alexithymia among Chinese medical students: A structural equation modeling analysis.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
- Alexithymia and Emotional Deficits Related to Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: An Investigation of Content and Process Disturbances.Case reports in psychiatry · 2022Article
- Mobile Phone Addiction Mediates the Relationship Between Alexithymia and Learning Burnout in Chinese Medical Students: A Structural Equation Model Analysis.Psychology research and behavior management · 2021Article
- Evaluation on Long-Term Test-Retest Reliability of the Short-Form Childhood Trauma Questionnaire in Patients with Schizophrenia.Psychology research and behavior management · 2021Article
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5 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
purposeA much higher prevalence of alexithymia has been found in medical students compared with the general population. This study aimed to test the potential mediating effect of psychological capital on the relationship between childhood trauma and alexithymia in Chinese medical students, thereby providing clues for future interventions aimed at dealing with alexithymia in this population.
methodsConvenience cluster sampling was used to recruit 1200 medical students in Chongqing, China. This cross-sectional study utilised the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire Short Form, the Toronto Alexithymia Scale, and the Psychological Capital Questionnaire. A structural equation model with maximum likelihood was used to study the mediating effect presented in the aim, and the significance of the mediating effect was examined by the bootstrap method. Multiple-group invariance analyses were also conducted to confirm the stability of the model.
resultsA total of 1018 were identified to have valid responses with a rate of 84.83%. 38.4% were males, 61.6% were females. The prevalence of alexithymia was 16.5%. Results of structural equation model showed that childhood trauma was positively related to alexithymia, with a standard path coefficient of 0.219 (C.R.=6.644, P<0.001). The partial mediating effect of psychological capital was 0.060 (P<0.001), accounting for 21.51% of the total effect of childhood trauma on alexithymia. Results of bootstrap method showed that the lower and upper bounds of the 95% confidence interval did not contain 0, and the multiple-group invariance analyses showed that the p values of the changes in the degrees of freedom and chi-square value were greater than 0.05, thus confirming the stability of the model.
conclusionChildhood trauma was a direct predictor of alexithymia among Chinese medical students, and the relationship between these two was partially mediated by psychological capital. Therefore, interventions aimed at enhancing psychological capital in this population may be effective at diminishing alexithymia.
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