Exploring Psychosocial Mediators of the Associations of Lifetime Trauma and Body Mass Index in African American Women

Purpose: This study sought to examine the association between lifetime trauma (i.e., childhood, adulthood, and cumulative) and body mass index (BMI) and if this association was mediated by psychosocial factors (i.e., depressive symptoms and stress) in a sample of African American women. Methods: We examined lifetime trauma among African American women in the Intergenerational Impact of Genetic and Psychological Factors on Blood Pressure Study (InterGEN) study. We conducted mediation analyses with bootstrapping to assess the direct and indirect effects of increasing forms of trauma across the lifespan on BMI. Depressive symptoms and stress were examined as mediators of these associations. Results: The analytic sample included 138 women with a mean age of 31.9 years. Approximately half of women reported any childhood trauma (47.8%) and more than half (73.2%) reported any adulthood trauma. The direct effects of all forms of trauma were associated with greater depressive symptoms. Only lifetime trauma was associated with higher stress overload (B=2.40, standard error [SE]=1.12, p<0.05). Higher depressive symptoms were associated with higher BMI in all models. The indirect effects of adulthood trauma (B=0.60, SE=0.20, p<0.01) and lifetime trauma (B=0.53, SE=0.20, p<0.01) on BMI were partially mediated by depressive symptoms. Conclusion: These findings indicate that depressive symptoms mediate the associations between adulthood and lifetime trauma with BMI. Interventions aimed at reducing elevated BMI in African American women should account for the influence of depressive symptoms. Future research should replicate these analyses in other samples of African American women.