Objective This study examined associations between childhood trauma, current depressive and anxiety symptoms, resilience, and suicidal risk among Vietnamese patients with schizophrenia, including cross-sectional indirect associations. Method A total of 581 clinically stable patients with schizophrenia (62.0% male; mean age = 40.35 ± 11.23 years) were recruited from multiple psychiatric facilities in Vietnam. Participants completed the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire–Short Form (CTQ-SF), Patient Health Questionnaire–4 (PHQ-4), Brief Resilience Scale (BRS), and Suicidal Behaviors Questionnaire–Revised (SBQ-R). Consistent partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLSc-SEM) with 5000 BCa bootstrap samples was used to estimate direct, indirect, and exploratory interaction associations. Generalized additive models and restricted cubic splines were used to explore nonlinear associations. Results Childhood trauma was positively associated with current depressive and anxiety symptoms (β = .256, p < .001) and suicidal risk (β = .194, p = .003). Current depressive and anxiety symptoms were associated with suicidal risk (β = .242, p = .001), and the indirect association from childhood trauma through current depressive and anxiety symptoms was significant (β = .062, p = .009). Resilience was associated with fewer current depressive and anxiety symptoms (β = −.323, p < .001) and showed a significant indirect association with lower suicidal risk through current depressive and anxiety symptoms (β = −.078, p = .004), but its direct association and both interaction terms were not significant. The full-sample PHQ-4 nonlinear finding was not robust in upper-tail sensitivity analyses, and no CTQ-SF threshold was supported. Conclusion Childhood trauma showed both a direct association with suicidal risk and an indirect association through current depressive and anxiety symptoms. Resilience was indirectly associated with lower suicidal risk through fewer PHQ-4 symptoms, but neither its direct association with suicide risk nor its moderating role was statistically significant. These cross-sectional findings do not establish temporal or causal pathways.
Objectives We investigated whether resilience accounts for the associations between lifetime adaptive and adverse life events and depressive symptoms in adults diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), and whether these associations are evident across childhood, youth, and adulthood. Methods In this cross-sectional study, 133 psychiatric inpatients with current MDD completed the Traumatic Antecedents Questionnaire (TAQ), Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC), and Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II). Path analyses estimated direct and indirect effects of life experiences (lifetime and across childhood, youth, and adulthood) on depressive symptoms via resilience. An exploratory assessment was conducted in an independent clinical sample of 67 patients (PDD/BPD). Results Adaptive life experiences were associated with lower depressive symptoms through an indirect-only effect via resilience (βz = −0.17, p = .004). Conversely, adverse experiences showed a direct effect on depressive symptoms (βz = 0.22, p = .004) that was not accompanied by a significant indirect effect. Exploratory analyses showed that the indirect effect via resilience was significantly larger for adaptive experiences during adulthood than during childhood. In the independent sample, the association between resilience and depressive symptoms was replicated, whereas the indirect effect via resilience was not confirmed. Conclusions Findings in the discovery sample are consistent with resilience accounting for the association between adaptive life experiences and depression severity, particularly for events occurring in adulthood. In contrast, adverse experiences were related to depressive symptoms independently of resilience. These results suggest that clinical practice may benefit from expanding beyond a symptom-oriented focus to actively promote positive life experiences.
Social communication difficulties are a transdiagnostic feature of many psychiatric conditions and show genetic overlap with multiple psychiatric conditions in the general population. While marked sex differences exist in both social communication difficulties and in the prevalence of psychiatric conditions, it remains underinvestigated whether these differences extend to genetic associations. We therefore investigated sex-specific patterns of genetic sharing between autism, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), schizophrenia, depression, anxiety, and bipolar disorder and social communication difficulties across development in the general population.Using data from the UK ALSPAC cohort (n ≤ 8795), we examined associations between polygenic scores for each condition and parent-reported social communication difficulties (Social Communication Disorder Checklist) at ages 7, 10, 13, and 16, including sex interactions. Boys had more social communication difficulties than girls up to age 13, whereas polygenic scores did not differ by sex. Polygenic scores for ADHD, schizophrenia, depression, and anxiety were associated with social communication difficulties across all ages, whereas autism associations were confined to age 7, and bipolar disorder associations to ages 7‒13 (R2 ≤ 0.8%). A sex-specific effect was observed only for schizophrenia at age 10, with stronger associations in boys (R2 = 0.6%) than girls (R2 = 2.3e-06%).These findings suggest that genetic liability to various major psychiatric conditions is reflected in variation in social communication difficulties in the general population. The limited evidence for sex-specific effects suggests that sex differences in the prevalence of psychiatric conditions and social communication difficulties may be influenced more strongly by environmental and gender-related factors, while sex should remain a consideration in future studies.
