The mediator role of metacognition on the relationship of childhood traumas with life quality

This research was conducted to examine whether metacognition has a mediating role in the relationship between childhood trauma and quality of life. The group who participated in the research consisted of 397 undergraduate students between the ages of 20 and 40 (204 women - 193 men) . In order to access the sociodemographic informations of the participants in the research, a sociodemographic information form was used in addition to the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ) to measure childhood traumatic experience, a short form which aims to assess the quality of life through the World Health Organization Quality of Life Scale (WHOQOLS), and the Metacognition Scale-30 to determine the levels of metacognition. Data analysis was carried out through descriptive analysis, independent sample t-test, ANOVA, Pearson correlation, simple and hierarchical regression analysis via the SPSS program. When the data was evaluated, a negative moderately related association between childhood trauma and life quality was found. At the same time, a positive association was found between childhood trauma degrees and metacognition values. As a conclusion, there is a significant negative relationship between the values of metacognition and the degrees of quality of life. Results were found in favor of our hypothesis in which metacognition plays a partial mediating role in the relationship between childhood trauma and quality of life. As a result, it was observed that the quality of life decreased with increasing childhood trauma degrees and metacognition degrees. Similarly, as childhood trauma degrees increase, the pathological metacognition values increase as well. In summary, these results show that metacognition has a partial mediating role in the relationship between childhood trauma and quality of life, and the childhood traumas may be a factor of paving the way for ineffective metacognition.