An examination of the link between adverse childhood experiences and coping styles, and the impact of attachment styles, and financial deprivation

Abstract

This thesis comprises two chapters: a systematic review investigating the sociodemographic differences in the coping styles of adults, and an empirical exploration of the impact of ACEs on adult coping styles.

Systematic Review
Purpose
A systematic review investigating the sociodemographic differences in the coping styles of adults was conducted to address the question: “What are the sociodemographic differences in coping styles in adults?”.
Methods
Research papers were sought from three databases (PsychINFO, MEDLINE (EBSCO), Web of Science) that matched the review criteria. Returned papers were screened, and quality assessed, to allow for a narrative synthesis of the extracted results. Due to the limited number of included studies, and their different clinical contexts and research methodologies, a meta-analysis was not able to be conducted.
Results
This review found that age, gender, location, and religion all seemed to have an impact on the coping of the participants studied. However, there were few papers to draw these conclusions from, and some of their findings were contradictory.
Conclusions
Age, gender, location, and faith factors were found to have a role in the coping of participants. However, due to a lack of agreement on a “definitive” definition, and measure, of coping; completing a robust search in this topic is challenging. There is scope for future research to agree a universal taxonomy of coping, as well as explore group, and individual, level differences.

Empirical Study
Objectives
Previous research has highlighted the long-term health impacts of ACEs, but little research has explored the processes by which ACEs relate to adulthood experience. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationships between ACEs and coping styles.
Design
This cross-sectional exploration of the links between adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), attachment patterns, financial deprivation, beliefs about emotion, and coping styles gathered data from a sample of 239 people recruited online internationally.
Methods
Using moderated mediation analysis, a conceptual model is proposed and tested to find out the nature of the relationships between variables.
Results
ACEs were seen to predict an increase in attachment insecurity, financial threat, and economic hardship in adulthood. All mediating variables were seen to impact coping style usage, though only childhood family affluence was seen to moderate the link between ACEs and financial threat in adulthood.
Conclusions
The study concluded that attachment patterns, and financial hardship, mediated the link between ACEs and coping styles. However, there is scope for future research to explore these links with more diverse groups, and longitudinally over time.

More information

Identifiers

ORCID for Nick Maguire: orcid.org/0000-0003-4295-8068

ORCID for Thomas Richardson: orcid.org/0000-0002-5357-4281

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