ArticleFrontiers in psychology2023
Adolescent mentalizing and childhood emotional abuse: implications for depression, anxiety, and borderline personality disorder features.
Article in Frontiers in psychology, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- The shadow of trauma: impaired mentalization in clinical populations - a systematic review.Psychological medicine · 2025Pooled it
- Different types of childhood trauma in relation to borderline personality traits and self-control in Chinese adolescents.BMC psychiatry · 2026Article
- The Role of Adolescent Mentalizing and Parental Reflective Functioning for Adolescents' Peer Relationships.Journal of adolescence · 2026Article
- The Effect of Childhood Psychological Abuse on Depressive Symptoms in Adolescents Exposed to Campus Suicide: The Chain Mediating Role of Psychological Trauma and Anxiety Symptoms.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Impact of childhood psychological abuse on the trajectory of adolescent depressive symptoms: a latent growth modeling approach.BMC psychiatry · 2025Article
- Childhood emotional trauma and social avoidance and distress in adolescents: psychological resilience as mediator and left-behind experience as moderator.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- How does childhood emotional abuse aggravate problematic mobile phone use among Chinese adolescents: roles of rumination and depression symptoms.BMC psychology · 2024Article
- Structural Equation Modeling of Childhood Trauma and Self-Stigma in Adult Inpatients with Borderline Personality Disorder.Psychology research and behavior management · 2024Article
- Playfulness and adolescence: mentalization and neuropsychoanalysis perspective.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
- Trauma-related symptoms in adolescents: the differential roles of sexual abuse and mentalizing.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
- Validation of the Three-Factor Reflective Functioning Questionnaire for Youth in a Chinese Adolescent Sample.Neuropsychiatric disease and treatment · 2024Article
- Measuring mentalizing in youth: further validation of the reflective functioning questionnaire for youth (RFQY-13).Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- Dimensional model of adolescent personality pathology, reflective functioning, and emotional maltreatment.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2023Article
- Mentalisation in Parents and Adolescents With Somatic Symptom Disorder: A Cross-Sectional Case-Control Study.Clinical psychology & psychotherapyArticle
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
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Abstract
Background: There is preliminary evidence that childhood emotional abuse (CEA) is a risk factor for adolescent mentalizing difficulties (Uncertainty/Confusion about mental states) and borderline personality features and that Uncertainty/Confusion about mental states mediate the relationship between CEA and adolescent borderline personality features, but these findings need replication. Furthermore, no previous studies have examined the relationship between adolescent mentalizing deficits, anxiety, and depression in the context of CEA. Objectives: This study examined the associations between CEA, adolescent borderline personality features, depression and anxiety symptoms and tested a pathway model where Uncertainty/Confusion about mental states mediates the relationships between CEA and adolescent borderline personality features, depression and anxiety symptoms. Method: A clinical sample of 94 adolescents completed the Reflective Function Questionnaire for Youth (RFQY) to assess mentalizing, the Childhood Experiences of Care and Abuse Questionnaire (CECA-Q), the Borderline Personality Disorders Features Scale (BPFS-C), and the Beck Youth Inventories for Depression (BDI-Y) and Anxiety (BAI-Y). Results: Uncertainty/Confusion about mental states partially mediated the relationship between CEA and borderline traits as well as anxiety. In addition, there was an indirect effect where CEA predicted Uncertainty/Confusion about mental states, which then predicted depression. Discussion: The findings are consistent with the mentalizing model of psychopathology and provide new evidence that Uncertainty/Confusion about mental states might be a critical mentalizing deficit that characterizes the associations between CEA and adolescent BPD features and depression and anxiety symptoms. Uncertainty/Confusion may be a transdiagnostic risk factor for adolescent psychological distress and dysfunction. We discuss the clinical implications.
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