The influence of childhood maltreatment on trait depression in patients with major depressive disorder: A moderated mediation model of rumination and mindful attention awareness

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is one of the most prevalent psychiatric disorders. Individuals who were exposed to childhood maltreatment might be an especially vulnerable group and were more likely to meet the diagnostic criteria for depression than those who were not. Trait depression refers to a personality trait predisposition to depression, expressed as the frequency of symptoms rather than a transient depressive mood state. Clarifying the relationship between childhood maltreatment and trait depression in patients with MDD has therefore become an important field of research. Childhood Trauma Questionnaire-Short Form (CTQ-SF), Ruminative Responses Scale (RRS), State-Trait Depression Scale (ST-DEP), and Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS) were used as research instruments. SPSS 23.0 statistical software was used for statistical analysis and examined the moderated mediation models. A total of 288 patients with MDD were included in this study. After standardization of the variables, the model revealed childhood maltreatment was positively associated with trait depression (β = 0.215, p < 0.001) and that rumination partially mediated the effect between childhood trauma and trait depression. Mindfulness moderated the association between rumination and trait depression in depressed patients (β = 0.171, p < 0.001). Simple slope tests showed that rumination significantly predicted trait depression in patients with high levels of mindfulness (bsimple = 0.460, p < 0.001, 95%CI = [0.339, 0.581]), while this predictive effect was not significant in patients with low levels (bsimple = 0.119, p = 0.097, 95%CI = [-0.022, 0.261]). After adding mediating variables, we found that the negative impact of childhood maltreatment on trait depression was both directly and indirectly through the patients' own ruminative levels. However, mindfulness performed a critical moderating role in the overall mediating model, aggravating the negative impact of childhood maltreatment on trait depression. There are several limitations in this study: the history of childhood maltreatment was reviewed and reported; the MAAS was a single-dimensional questionnaire that fails to measure the content of other mindfulness factors; cross-sectional data could not be used to infer the causal relationship between variables.