The Role of Cognitive and Emotional Factors in the Relationship Between Childhood Trauma and Non-Suicidal Self-Injury Among College Students: A Network Analysis

Background: Non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) is a serious mental health problem among adolescents and young adults. Childhood trauma is a distal factor for NSSI and can also lead to cognitive abnormalities and maladaptive emotion regulation during the growth and development of individuals. However, it is unclear how childhood trauma and cognitive-emotional factors interact with NSSI. Objective: This study investigated the roles of childhood trauma and cognitive-emotional factors in NSSI among Chinese college students using network analysis. Methods: A total of 999 students from a university in central China were included in this study. Network analysis was used to examine the interrelationships between the frequency of NSSI thoughts and behaviors, childhood trauma subtypes (measured using the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire-Short Form), and cognitive-emotional factors such as early maladaptive schemas (EMSs) (measured using the Young Schema Questionnaire-Short Form), core self-evaluation (measured using the Core Self-Evaluations Scale), and emotion regulation (ER) strategies (measured using the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire). Structural equation modeling was used to further explore the role of the nodes most closely related to NSSI in the network analysis. Results: Emotional abuse and disconnection/rejection EMS are found to be directly related to NSSI thoughts (edge weight = 0.16 and 0.08, respectively). Disconnection/rejection EMS partially mediated (28.64%) the relationship between emotional abuse and NSSI thoughts, with a higher level of expression suppression corresponding to a greater positive relationship between emotional abuse and the disconnection/rejection EMS (p < 0.01). Conclusion: Our findings were in line with the cognitive-emotional model of NSSI, highlighting the importance of NSSI prevention in identifying risk groups who experienced emotional abuse in childhood and tended to use expressive suppression as an ER strategy.