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The Childhood Emotional Abuse and Subjective Happiness in Individuals with Substance Abuse: The Role of Emotion Regulation

Year: 2026
Type: article
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: Early childhood emotional abuse is associated with substance use and poor health. Emotion regulation strategies can be useful to understand how early abuse may affect later happiness, but very little evidence is available in South Asian treatment settings. This study aimed to understand the relationship between childhood emotional abuse, subjective happiness, and emotion regulation strategies, and to examine whether these strategies are associated with the link between abuse and happiness in men with substance use disorders. A cross-sectional study was conducted with 150 male inpatients aged 17 to 40 years in rehabilitation centres in Rawalpindi and Islamabad, selected through purposive sampling. Participants completed the Emotional Abuse Questionnaire, Subjective Happiness Scale, and Emotion Regulation Questionnaire to assess cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression. Correlation and bootstrapped parallel mediation analyses were conducted, with age and type of substance included as covariates. Childhood emotional abuse showed a negative correlation with subjective happiness (r = −.27, p < .01) and positive correlations with cognitive reappraisal (r = .26, p < .01) and expressive suppression (r = .29, p < .01). Childhood emotional abuse had an adverse association with happiness (β = −.32, p < .01), with cognitive reappraisal accounting for a small indirect effect that was marginally significant (indirect effect = 0.008, 95% confidence interval [0.000, 0.019]). The indirect effect through expressive suppression was not noteworthy. Overall, childhood emotional abuse was associated with lower subjective happiness among men with substance use disorders, and cognitive reappraisal explained only a small part of this association.
DOI: 10.67785/pjpp.8.379
Institution: Air University
Language: English
Field: Psychology
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W7223174776
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