The Relation Between Childhood Emotional Maltreatment And Mental Health And Emotional Expressions

Previous studies have found that childhood emotional maltreatment,as extremely negative experience during growth,has a deleterious impact on one's mental health condition and social-emotional development both during childhood and adulthood.Meanwhile,sexual minority population has been found to be especially more vulnerable to such maltreatment and abusive parenting.However,the interacted effect of sexual orientation and childhood emotional maltreatment on the mental health and social-emotional adjustment in later adulthood remains unclear.Therefore,the current study attempts to examine the lasting effect of childhood emotional maltreatment on mental health and emotional expressions,as well as the moderation role of sexual orientation in such associations.259 adults aged 21-31 from urban Shanghai participated in the study using snowball sampling,with 72 heterosexual males,70 sexual minority males and 97 heterosexual females.Selfreported data on emotional maltreatment experience before 18,depressive symptoms,daily discrimination and resilience were collected using Adverse Childhood Experience-International Questionnaire(ACE-IQ),Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale(CES-D),Daily Discrimination scale,and Conner-Davidson Resilience Scale(CD-RISC)scale.Emotional expressions(happy,sad,neutral,scare)under three epochs of Trier Social Stress Task(video-watching,public speech,recovery as baseline,stress,and recovery,respectively)were measured using FaceReader 7.0 software.Results showed that among the effects of emotional abuse on mental health: 1)sexual minority males who experienced more emotional maltreatment before 18 reported higher level of somatic complain,daily discrimination,and lower level of resilience;2)heterosexuals males also reported more somatic complain and worse resilience;3)heterosexual females reported lower level of positive affect.Regarding the impact of emotional abuse on emotional expression under different conditions: 4)sexual minority males who experienced more emotional maltreatment showed more happiness during recovery and maintained more happiness from speech to recovery;5)heterosexual females expressed more sadness during recovery and maintained more happiness from speech to recovery stress recovery stages;6)no obvious connections between emotional maltreatment and emotional expressions were found in male heterosexualityOur findings suggested that as an extremely negative source of stress,the effect of emotional maltreatment on mental health and emotional expressions may vary based on different sexual orientation.Among them,experiences of being maltreated emotionally may have more serious adverse consequences for sexual minorities.