Trauma exposure during critical developmental periods, such as adolescence, is associated with worse mental health and impaired executive functions than in adulthood (Dube et al. 2001; Follette, Polusny, Bechtle, and Naugle 1996; Green et al. 2000; Khoury et al. 2010). During adolescence, one specific executive function, response inhibition, is particularly undeveloped and associated with increased risk‐taking behaviors, such as experimentation with substances (Romer Thomsen et al. 2018). A study of individuals with bipolar disorder compared to unaffected individuals with or without a history of childhood trauma showed greater dysfunction in inhibitory control in individuals with a history of childhood trauma compared to those without childhood trauma, regardless of a bipolar disorder diagnosis (Marshall et al. 2016). Trauma, particularly assaultive trauma, during adolescence is associated with altered response inhibition (Bounoua, Miglin, Spielberg, and Sadeh 2020), suggesting trauma type plays a significant role in these associations. Studies have also shown that deficient response inhibition is correlated with trauma‐related disorders, including PTSD and SUDs (Gilpin and Weiner 2017). However, few studies investigate these associations, especially by trauma type, in high‐risk samples.
