Objective: Survivors of childhood maltreatment (CM) during emerging adulthood are at increased risk for suicidal ideation, with complex posttraumatic stress disorder (CPTSD) symptoms potentially serving as underlying mechanisms. However, few previous studies concurrently considered protective factors such as positive childhood experiences (PCEs) or employed longitudinal designs to explore whether the development of CPTSD symptoms could mediate CM/PCEs and suicidal ideation. This study aimed to investigate the developmental trajectories of CPTSD symptoms and examine their mediating roles between CM/PCEs and suicidal ideation. Methods: We conducted a four-wave longitudinal study involving 1,776 Chinese first-year college students who had experienced CM (935 [52.6%] were females; 1,135 [63.9%] were under 18 years old). We utilized parallel process growth mixture modeling to identify heterogeneous trajectories of CPTSD symptoms and examined their mediating roles between CM/PCEs and suicidal ideation. Results & Discussion: We identified five distinct CPTSD symptom trajectory classes: resilient, recovery, delayed, high disturbances in self-organization, and chronic. Additionally, emotional abuse was positively associated with suicidal ideation, whereas PCEs were negatively associated with suicidal ideation, with both associations mediated through these CPTSD symptom trajectories. These findings supported the key roles of internalizing psychopathology between early negative/positive childhood experiences and suicidal ideation as suggested in the developmental model of suicide risk. Conclusions: The development of CPTSD symptoms exhibits heterogeneity among emerging adult CM survivors and can serve as a mechanism linking emotional abuse/PCEs to suicidal ideation.

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