The role of emotion regulation strategies in the association between physical abuse and borderline symptoms among deprived youth in Ecuador
Murgueitio N. Trueba A.F. Pluck G.
September 2025Elsevier Ltd
Children and Youth Services Review
2025#176
Background: Childhood adversity is robustly associated with psychopathology, including borderline personality disorder. However, the underlying mechanisms by which these experiences increase risk for psychopathology are poorly understood. Modern theoretical models of childhood adversity suggest that violence exposure (e.g., physical abuse) impacts emotion regulation, while other experiences impact separate developmental outcomes such as executive function and language. Objective: The present study tested whether physical abuse was associated with adaptive and non-adaptive emotion regulation strategies among adolescents living in foster care, and an aged-matched group living with their families. Further, it explored whether the association between physical abuse and borderline symptoms was explained by emotion regulation. Participants and Setting: Adolescents living in foster care (N = 44) and a family-based group (N = 128) in Ecuador, a middle-income country with a high prevalence of physical abuse. Methods: Adolescents reported on physical abuse and completed questionnaires to assess use of emotion regulation strategies, and borderline symptoms. Linear regressions and multi-group path analyses were conducted to test our hypotheses. Results: Physical abuse was associated with greater use of self-blame, rumination, catastrophizing, and acceptance, and a positive indirect effect of physical abuse on borderline symptoms through catastrophizing was significant. Conclusions: Results underscore the importance of physical abuse on specific emotion regulation strategies, replicating findings from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic (WEIRD) samples. Moreover, they suggest the importance of studying these mechanisms as they relate to specific debilitating syndromes, such as borderline personality.
Borderline personality , Ecuador , Emotion regulation , Foster care , Physical abuse
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Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, United States
Colegio de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades, Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Quito, Ecuador
Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States
Instituto de Neurociencias, Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Quito, Ecuador
Faculty of Psychology, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand
College of Human Sciences and Education, KIMEP University, Almaty, Kazakhstan
Department of Psychology and Neuroscience
Colegio de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades
Department of Psychiatry
Instituto de Neurociencias
Faculty of Psychology
College of Human Sciences and Education
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