The Pattern of Structural Relations of Predicting Craving Based on Childhood Maltreatment, Negative Emotionality and Impulsivity with the Mediating Role of Behavioral Emotion Regulation

This study aimed to determine the pattern of structural relations of predicting craving based onchildhood maltreatment, negative emotionality and impulsivity with the mediating role of behavioral emotion regulation.

The method of this study was descriptive-correlational. The whole people with substance dependence referring to Ardabil centers of addiction treatment in the second half of 2019 comprised statistical population of this research. Two hundred and twenty people were selected through multistage random cluster sampling and were asked to respond to questionnaires of childhood maltreatment, negative emotionality, Impulsivity, behavioral regulation of emotion and also craving. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistical indicators, Pearson correlation coefficient and structural equation modeling using SPSS 25 and Lisrel 8.8 software.

The final results of the structural equation model indicated that the pattern of predicting craving based on childhood abuse, negative and impulsive excitability is confirmed by the mediating role of positive and negative behavioral regulation of emotion (except the relation of impulsive with craving). The goodness-of-fit indices of RMSEA, CFI, PNFI, and IFI indicated the good fit of the proposed model and its conformity with the experimental data.

These results showed that childhood maltreatment, negative emotionality and impulsivity, in adition to direct effect on craving, can effect indirectly it via dysfunction in beharioral emotion dysregulation and can be barrier to treatment of substance use, the findings can be applied to design the intervension for substance use.