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Background: Research has found that parental failures of care during childhood and insecure attachment styles are positively associated with problematic gaming. From a developmental framework, it is possible to hypothesize that attachment styles mediate the relationship between parental bonding and problematic gaming. Methods: This hypothesis was tested in a sample of 598 videogame players (410 males, 68.56%) aged between 18 and 61 years old (M = 26.68, SD = 7.23). Participants were recruited through an online survey. Self-report instruments were administered to assess problematic gaming, parental bonding, and adult attachment styles. Results: Positive paternal care was a direct and negative predictor of problematic gaming, whereas maternal overprotection indirectly predicted problematic gaming through preoccupied attachment. Conclusions: These findings suggest that positive paternal care represents a protective factor for problematic gaming; in contrast, maternal overprotection might foster a negative view of the self in the child, which increases the risk to excessively use videogames, perhaps as a maladaptive coping strategy to regulate negative feelings. Prevention programs might be aimed to improve the responsiveness of parents towards the child’s emotional needs, to prevent the development of problematic gaming. Also, clinical intervention with problematic gamers might foster their feelings of security toward relationships, to promote both a healthier use of videogames and a better quality of life.

Consistent evidence supports the view that childhood trauma is linked with insecure attachment styles and psychopathology. However, it is a matter of debate how different forms of child maltreatment may relate with dimensions of anxiety and avoidance in attachment relationships and may foster specific configurations of clinical symptoms. Accordingly, examining the associations between childhood trauma, insecure attachment and psychopathology from a correlation network perspective may serve to fill a relevant gap in the literature. Three-hundred fifty-two adults aged between 18 and 73 years old (M= 32.70; SD = 11.72) completed measures on child maltreatment, attachment styles and psychopathology. A regularized partial correlation network was estimated to examine the relationships between the three constructs. The network showed 101 out of 190 nonzero correlations linking childhood traumatic experiences, anxious and avoidant attachment dimensions, and clinical symptoms. The analysis of the network showed that being exposed to emotional abuse and emotional neglect increased the risk of being exposed to other types of childhood trauma, such as physical abuse. Anxious attachment was more strongly linked to child maltreatment and psychopathology than avoidant attachment. Suicidal ideation and maladaptive personality functioning were the clinical symptoms most strongly connected with the other variables in the network. These findings might be relevant for the assessment and treatment of individuals who display clinical problems related to insecure attachment and early relational trauma.