Social defeat as a mediator of the relationship between childhood trauma and paranoid ideation

Social defeat, the subjective experience of viewing oneself as a failure or social outsider, is associated with various psychiatric disorders. Recent studies suggest that social defeat may play an important role in the development of psychotic disorders. This study examined the role of social defeat in the relationship between childhood trauma and paranoid ideation, a symptom of psychosis, in non-psychotic mental disorders. Psychiatric patients (N = 199) completed the Korean version of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire, the Korean version of the Defeat Scale, and Restructured Clinical Scale 6 (Ideas of Persecution) of the Korean version of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2. A partial correlation analysis revealed that childhood trauma was significantly related to social defeat and paranoid ideation after controlling for age and gender. Structural equation modeling confirmed that the relationship between childhood trauma and paranoid ideation was partially mediated by social defeat. Thus, social defeat is a possible psychological mechanism underlying the association between childhood trauma and paranoia.