Attachment insecurity mediates the effects of intimate partner violence and childhood maltreatment on depressive symptoms in adult women.

Abstract

Insecure attachment style may be one mechanism by which women who have experienced intimate partner violence (IPV) and childhood maltreatment (CM) are at increased risk for depressive symptoms. In fact, women who experienced high levels of both CM and IPV may be at the greatest risk for attachment insecurity and resulting depressive symptoms, as negative working models from CM may be exacerbated by IPV in adulthood. This effect is likely driven by emotional CM and IPV, rather than other types of abuse, as abusive insults may be internalized, resulting in greater attachment insecurity and depressive symptoms. Method: A community sample of pregnant women (N ϭ 206) completed self-report measures of IPV, CM, attachment insecurity, and depressive symptoms. Results: Findings from structural equation modeling indicated that CM and IPV exhibited independent effects on depressive symptoms, and these associations were fully mediated by insecure attachment style. The interaction between CM and IPV did not predict attachment insecurity or depressive symptoms. Emotional and sexual CM as well as physical IPV predicted attachment insecurity, and emotional IPV had a direct effect on depression. Conclusions: Although emotional CM and IPV had indirect and direct effects on depressive symptoms, respectively, multiple types of abuse were associated with attachment insecurity and resulting depression. Insecurely attached women may interpret IPV in a way that is congruent with their negative working models, resulting in depressive symptoms. In addition, IPV may work to maintain, rather than exacerbate, attachment insecurity resulting from CM.

Exploring Relationships: A Systematic Review on Intimate Partner Violence and Attachment

“…No other studies tested such mediation model. Then, insecure attachment has been showed to moderate the link between IPV victimization and PTSD symptoms (Scott and Babcock, 2009 ) and to mediate the relationship between physical victimization and depressive symptomatology (Smagur et al, 2018 ). Furthermore, others variables seem to play a role in the relationship between attachment and IPV victimization as conflict resolution strategies (Bonache et al, 2017 ), anger (Kuijpers et al, 2012 ) and religiosity (Higginbotham et al, 2007 ).…”

“…Two additional studies were conducted among male-only samples being veterans suffering from PTSD (Owens et al, 2014 ) or batterers (Bélanger et al, 2015 ). Unfortunately, only a small proportion of studies recruited women reporting experiences of psychological IPV (Henderson et al, 1997 ; Shurman and Rodriguez, 2006 ; Kuijpers et al, 2012 ; Smagur et al, 2018 ). Finally, two studies examined the topic among minority populations of women (Weston, 2008 ; Hellemans et al, 2015 ).…”

“…First, gender differences emerged in some studies (Péloquin et al, 2011 ; Hellemans et al, 2015 ). Also, studies showed that insecure attachment not only predicted psychological IPV victimization beyond the role of depression (Riggs and Kaminski, 2010 ) but also mediated such relationship (Smagur et al, 2018 ). Finally, the use of destructive conflict strategies has been showed to explain the pathway by which insecure attachment leads to psychological IPV victimization (Bonache et al, 2016 , 2017 ).…”

“…Interestingly, these studies are relatively recent with the majority having been published in the last 3 years. All of them, except one (Bonache et al, 2016 ), were conducted in USA (Weston, 2008 ; Karakurt et al, 2013 ; Ross et al, 2016 ; Sommer et al, 2017 ; Smagur et al, 2018 ). Half of the studies were cross-sectional in their design with the remainders being longitudinal.…”

“…Studies recruited large samples ranging from 51 to 574 participants by group (Weston, 2008 ; Bonache et al, 2016 ). Noteworthy, only one research was conducted on participants with a reported history of IPV (Smagur et al, 2018 ) with most of others recruiting couples extracted from general population (Karakurt et al, 2013 ; Sommer et al, 2017 ) or undergraduate students (Bonache et al, 2016 ; Ross et al, 2016 ).…”