The Relationship Between Childhood Trauma with Defense Styles in Depression Patients

Abstract

Objective: We aimed to investigate the relationship between childhood trauma with defense styles in depression patients. Materials and Methods: Fifty-seven patients with depression and 51 age-sex-matched healthy volunteers participated in this study. All participants completed the Socio-demographic Form, Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), Defense Style Questionnaire-40 (DSQ-40), and Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ). We compared defense style and childhood trauma scores between the two groups. Spearman correlation analysis was conducted between the BDI, DSQ-40, and CTQ. Also, defense styles and depression levels were investigated between groups with and without childhood trauma according to CTQ. Results: The mean age of the patients was 30.93 ± 8.43 years and the mean age of the control group was 30.94 ± 7.05. Mature defense styles scores were statistically significantly higher in the control group than in the depression group. Immature defense styles scores and all sub-dimensions except for dissociation scores were statistically significantly higher in the patient group. There was a significant positive correlation between BDI score and CTQ (r = 0.560; p < 0.001), immature defense styles (r = 0.527; p < 0.001), and a negative significant correlation with mature defense styles. The BDI score (p < 0.001) and immature defense styles (p = 0.013) were statistically significantly higher in the childhood trauma group than the group without childhood trauma. Conclusions: Our study results show that there is a significant correlation between childhood trauma and decreased mature defense styles and increased immature defense styles in depression patients than the healthy control group.

Keywords

• childhood trauma
• depression
• defense styles
• çocukluk çağı travması
• depresyon
• savunma biçimleri