Childhood Trauma Experience and Emotion Management Skills in Predicting General Psychological Health

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationships between general psyhological health and childhood trauma experiences (physical abuse, physical neglect, emotional abuse and emotional neglect), emotion management skills and to examine which variables the best predictor of general psychological health (anxiety, depression, negative self, somatization, hostility). The participants of the study were 188 female (64%) , 108 male (36%) total 296 university students. The age range was from 17 to 27 (M= 20.76; SD= 1.81). To collect data Childhood Trauma Questionnaire-Short Form (Bernstein et al., 2003), Emotion Management Skills Scale (Çeçen, 2006) and Brief Symptom Inventory (Derogatis, 1992) have been applied to the students. After collecting data Pearson Momentum Correlation and Stepwise Regression statistic analysis were applied. The results indicated that there are significant negative moderate and relatively strong correlations between emotion management skills and depression, anxiety, negative self, somatization, hostility and there are significant negative correlations between emotion management and psychological abuse, psychological neglect, physical abuse, physical neglect. In addition, the results have displayed that there are positive significant correlations between psychological abuse, psychological neglect, physical abuse, physical neglect and depression, anxiety, negative self, somatization, hostility (except physical neglect and depression). The stepwise regression analyses indicated that emotion management skills and emotional abuse were the best predictor of depression (30.7 %) , anxiety (28.4%), negative self (33.6%), somatization (19.4%), hostility (23.1% total variance were explained ). *This study is a part of Melek Beyhan Mayda?s master thesis under supervision of Prof. Ay?e Rezan Çeçen-Erogul at the Psychological Counseling and Guidance Programme.*This study was supported by Mu?la S?tk? Koçman University BAP.