Nurturing Family Environment in Childhood as a Source of Resilience in Adulthood in an Inner-City Population

Introduction

Exposure to trauma such as childhood abuse, physical and sexual assault, natural disaster, and other traumatic experiences substantially increases risk for major depressive disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder, substance use disorder, suicide attempts, or comorbidity of these.1–6 Interestingly, there are individuals who cope successfully and report few or no adverse psychiatric sequelae despite these trauma exposures, whose outcomes exemplify resilience.7–9 Resilience is the relative resistance to environmental risk experiences.10, 11 It is the ability to cope and adapt successfully to stress, adversity, or trauma.10 Although there have been a number of studies on relationships between adverse childhood experiences and negative mental health outcomes in adulthood, our knowledge of relationships between nurturing childhood family environment and resilience and between resilience and positive and negative affect are limited. Hence, in this study, we examined (1) association between retrospective perception of nurturing quality of developmental family environment and resilience, measured with the Connor–Davidson Resilience Scale (CDRISC) and (2) association between resilience and positive and negative affect.

Abstract

INTRODUCTION

Resilience is the ability to cope and adapt successfully to adversity or trauma.

OBJECTIVES

We aimed to examine associations between resilience and developmental family environment as well as resilience and positive and negative affect.

METHODS

In this cross-sectional study of 1321 adults, resilience was assessed with the Connor–Davidson Resilience Scale, developmental family environment with a retrospective self-report questionnaire, affect with the Positive and Negative affect Scale, and trauma exposure with the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire and Traumatic Events Inventory. Associations were examined with multiple linear regression, adjusting for potential confounders, including age, sex, race, trauma load, education, income, and marital status.

RESULTS

Nurturing developmental family environment was associated with more resilience (β=2.28; p <0.0001), after adjusting for potential confounding factors. Higher resilience scores were associated with higher positive affect scores, both as a main effect (β=0.30; p<0.0001) and an interaction term with childhood abuse (β=0.02; p=0.006), after controlling for potential confounders; resilience mitigates the adverse effects of childhood abuse on positive affect score. Higher resilience scores were associated with lower negative affect scores (β=–0.17; p<0.0001). Additionally, childhood abuse/neglect and other trauma exposure were negatively associated with resilience. Lastly, higher education, higher income, and being married were associated with more resilience.

CONCLUSION

Nurturing developmental family environment is a significant predictor of resilience in adulthood. Additionally, resilience is associated with more positive and less negative affect. Prospective studies are needed to examine the causal relationship between developmental family environment and resilience.

Keywords

Resilience, developmental family environment, positive affect, negative affect, childhood abuse