Adverse childhood experiences, attachment insecurity, and emotion regulation: implications for substance use in emerging adulthood

The new responsibilities and circumstances of individuals entering the first phases of adulthood allow for many outlets of coping that may be potentially harmful to one’s health and/or wellbeing, with one such outlet being substance use. In this study, self-report measures were used to assess the relationship between adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), parental warmth, and emotion dysregulation and their potential predictive power for substance use in emerging adulthood. It was hypothesized that parental warmth, an facet of attachment, would mediate a relationship between ACEs and emotion dysregulation, with an overall effect on 1) substance use and 2) its associated negative consequences. Two hundred sixty-six participants’ responses were evaluated using a moderated mediation analysis. Neither model yielded significant results relating to mediation in this study, though potential pathways for future research are expanded. The direct pathway from ACEs to substance use and associated consequences in adulthood were significant in both models. Exploratory analyses revealed the underlying assumed moderation effect of emotion dysregulation was incorrect, at least for the sample obtained for the study. However, further analyses suggest parental warmth serves a moderating role on this relationship. Results are discussed with relation to methods and limitations