The relationship between childhood traumas, irrational beliefs and psychopathological symstoms

Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between childhood traumas, irrational beliefs and psychopathological symptom levels of adult participants. Method: A total of 406 participants, including 276 women and 130 men, with a mean age of 27.34±7.49 and a range of 18-59, were reached online. The majority of the sample were females (68%), highly educated (77%), with a high monthly income (60%), whose mothers (51%) and fathers (51%) had low education levels, whose parents were not separated or divorced in childhood (83%) and whose primary care was undertaken by their mother and other family members (51%). A Sociodemographic and Family Information Form, the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ), the Irrational Beliefs Scale (IBS) and the Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI) were used in the study. Results: In our sample, significant positive correlations existed between CTQ total score, and subdimensions of emotional neglect, physical neglect, emotional abuse, sexual abuse and physical abuse scores, as well as BSI total score, and subdimension scores of obsessive-compulsive symptom, somatization, interpersonal sensitivity, depression, anxiety, phobic anxiety, paranoid thought and psychoticism. On the other hand, there were significant positive relationships between IBS total score and BSI total and subdimension scores of obsessive-compulsive symptoms, somatization, interpersonal sensitivity, depression, anxiety, phobic anxiety, paranoid thought and psychoticism. In our sample, positive correlations were found between CTQ total and subdimension scores of emotional neglect, physical neglect, emotional abuse, sexual abuse and physical abuse and IBS total scores. Conclusion: The findings revealed positive relationships between adult individuals' irrational belief psychopathological symptom levels and childhood traumas. This suggests that childhood traumas could possibly be important risk factors for the levels of irrational belief and psychopathological symptoms in adult life. Keywords: Childhood Traumas, Psychopathological Symptoms, Irrational Beliefs, Cognitive Distortion, Childhood Neglect and Abuse.