Grant: Doctoral Research Award: Canada Graduate Scholarships

Suicide is a leading cause of death among Canadian youth. Research indicates that childhood abuse is a reliable risk factor of suicidal thoughts and behaviours (STBs). There is also evidence that STBs reduce emotional distress in youth-aged childhood abuse victims due to their reduced capacity for emotion regulation (ER). Early relationships with caregivers are salient context for acquiring ER skills, placing childhood abuse victims at a disadvantage. Further, ER has been shown to mediate the relationship between childhood abuse and STBs. Prior work investigating this association has primarily utilized self-report and behavioural tasks, despite research suggesting ER operating within a very brief timescale which cannot be captured using either methodology. To operationalize ER in the proposed study, EEG will be used due to its excellent temporal resolution in the millisecond range. In particular, the late positive potential (LPP) following presentation of emotional images has been shown to be a consistent neuropsychological marker of ER across time in youth. Although there is evidence to suggest that increased LPP activity is associated with more severe psychiatric symptoms, there is limited research specifically investigating STBs. Capitalizing on state-of-the-art research methods (e.g., EEG), I propose to test whether a theorized association between childhood abuse and suicide ideation is mediated by ER. Furthermore, this study will incorporate best practices suggested by researchers including a longitudinal design and comprehensive assessment of childhood abuse to address current limitations in the literature. I hypothesize that decreased ER will explain why youth with more severe childhood abuse experience more frequent suicide ideation. This study will help elucidate the neural correlate of ER underlying suicide ideation in victims of childhood abuse, which may in turn diminish preventable loss of life.