Child trauma exposure and psychopathology: mechanisms of risk and resilience

Exposure to trauma in childhood is associated with elevated risk for multiple forms of psychopathology. Here we present a biopsychosocial model outlining the mechanisms that link child trauma with psychopathology and protective factors that can mitigate these risk pathways. We focus on four mechanisms of enhanced threat processing: information processing biases that facilitate rapid identification of environmental threats, disruptions in learning mechanisms underlying the acquisition of fear, heightened emotional responses to potential threats, and difficulty disengaging from negative emotional content. Supportive relationships with caregivers, heightened sensitivity to rewarding and positive stimuli, and mature amygdalaprefrontal circuitry each serve as potential buffers of these risk pathways, highlighting novel directions for interventions aimed at preventing the onset of psychopathology following child trauma.