Epistemic mistrust mediates the association between childhood maltreatment and impairments in mentalizing in a sample of university students

Abstract

Background

Mentalizing is linked to mental health development and psychosocial functioning. Identifying and understanding the factors that may be associated with ineffective mentalizing is crucial for creating targeted psychosocial or psychotherapeutic interventions.

Objective

This exploratory study assesses whether experiences of childhood maltreatment, along with attachment insecurity and epistemic mistrust, are associated with limitations in mentalizing abilities.

Participants and setting

A total of 382 primarily young adults from different universities completed questionnaires about their childhood maltreatment experiences (retrospectively assessed), attachment insecurity, epistemic mistrust, and ineffective mentalizing, using a cross-sectional study design. All participants were pursuing a degree in educational fields.

Methods

Structural equation modeling was applied to test the hypothesized framework.

Results

There were significant positive associations between experiences of childhood maltreatment, epistemic mistrust (β = 0.32 [0.17–0.46], p = .001), and attachment insecurity (β = 0.29 [0.18–0.40], p < .001). Epistemic mistrust fully mediated the relationship between childhood maltreatment and ineffective mentalizing (β = 0.17 [0.08–0.28], p = .001). However, attachment insecurity did not mediate this link.

Conclusion

This exploratory study sheds light on the development of mentalizing impairments, though it is limited by its cross-sectional nature, reliance on self-reporting, and the uniformity of the sample with mainly female, primarily young adults from different universities. The preliminary findings suggest the role of attachment insecurity might have been overemphasized previously. Moreover, the link between childhood maltreatment and mentalizing deficits appears more intricate, as it was fully mediated by epistemic mistrust in this study. The findings support the notion of addressing epistemic mistrust in psychosocial interventions designed to improve mentalizing abilities that have been compromised.