ArticleBMC psychiatry2026
The transdiagnostic network of childhood trauma, anxiety, and depression in college students: centrality of emotional neglect and the bridging function of emotional abuse.
Article in BMC psychiatry, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundCollege students are highly susceptible to anxiety and depression, for which childhood trauma (CT) is a major risk factor. However, the fine-grained pathways linking specific CT subtypes to these disorders remain unclear, limiting targeted intervention. This study aimed to use network analysis to investigate the associations between CT subtypes and symptoms of anxiety, depression, and their comorbidities among college students.
methodsA cross-sectional online survey was conducted among 2,864 students from nine Chinese universities. Participants completed the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire-Short Form (CTQ-SF), Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7), and Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9). Three regularized partial correlation networks (CT-anxiety, CT-depression, and CT-comorbidity) were constructed using the R package. Expected influence (EI) and bridge expected influence (BEI) indices were used to identify central and bridge nodes. Network stability was assessed via case-dropping bootstrapping.
resultsEmotional neglect consistently emerged as the most central node across all three networks. In the CT-anxiety network, emotional abuse and "afraid something will happen" were key bridging nodes. In the CT-depression network, emotional abuse and "thoughts of death" possessed the greatest degree of bridge centrality. Critically, in the CT-comorbidity network, this same pairing again exhibited the strongest bridge centrality, demonstrating its stable role as a transdiagnostic bridge linking CT to both anxiety and depression, even within comorbid presentations.
conclusionsEmotional neglect, emotional abuse, and the key symptoms "afraid something will happen" and "thoughts of death" emerge as the central and bridge nodes linking CT to anxiety, depression, and their comorbidity. These nodes represent precise targets for early intervention to reduce the mental health burden among college students.
trial registrationNot applicable.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.