Childhood Trauma, Alexithymia and Emotional Dysregulation in Adults with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

Abstract

This current study was conducted with the aim of examining the relationship among childhood trauma, emotional dysregulation and alexithymia in adults with obsessive compulsive disorder. Using correlational research design, the participants with the age range of 20-44 years were selected through purposive sampling strategy for the participants diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder from different hospital in Lahore. This study revealed that almost 51.1% males and 48.9% females has participated. Toronto Alexithymia Scale (Bagby, 1994), Childhood Trauma Questionnaire-short form (Bernstein & Fink, 1998) and Emotional Regulation Inventory (Roth et al., 2009) were utilized. Moreover, results revealed that childhood trauma was associated with emotional dysregulation. Furthermore, regression analysis reported that childhood trauma is significant predictor of alexithymia and emotional dysregulation and explains the variance in alexithymia and emotional dysregulation. In addition, mediation analysis showed that the significant indirect pathway of the study variables which further revealed that there is variation from alexithymia among childhood trauma and emotional dysregulation. Thus, findings revealed that there is significant correlation between childhood trauma and emotional dysregulation among adults with obsessive compulsive disorder. Alexithymia significantly mediates the association between childhood trauma and alexithymia. Moreover, this research would be beneficial to fill out the research gap in Pakistani literature as there is scarcity in studying the mediating pathway of alexithymia among obsessive compulsive disorder adults in Pakistan. People might take guidance that child’s environment must be hindrance free so that they could protect themselves from developing pathologies in later life.