Childhood psychological maltreatment, optimism, aversion to happiness, and psychological adjustment among college students

Abstract

Although there is increasing empirical evidence of the negative impact of childhood maltreatment on adult mental health and well-being, little is known about the underlying factors that mitigate the link between psychological maltreatment and psychological adjustment. A critical step is to examine these mechanisms to develop prevention and intervention strategies to decrease the adverse impacts of child maltreatment on psychological adjustment and well-being among young adults. The presented study aimed to explore the association between childhood psychological maltreatment and young adults’ psychological adjustment through aversion to happiness, optimism, and pessimism. The sample of this study comprised 511 college students. Participants included 64% female, with ranging in age between 18 and 39 years ( M = 21.36, SD = 2.55). Findings from the study indicated that aversion to happiness was a significant mediator in the association of psychological maltreatment with pessimism, optimism, and psychological adjustment. Further, optimism and pessimism mitigated the link of both aversion to happiness and psychological maltreatment with psychological adjustment. The findings indicate that optimism-based strategies are key to fostering psychological adjustment and could help to reduce the negative impacts of aversion to happiness and child maltreatment on young adults’ adjustment and wellbeing.

Coronavirus–Related Stressors, Resilient Mindset, Loneliness, Depressive Symptoms in College Students: Testing a Moderated Mediation Model

“…The inventory items were responded using a 5-point Likert type scale, ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). The scale had strong internal consistency reliability estimates with different cultures (Su et al, 2014; Wiese et al, 2018) including Turkish (Arslan, 2022). The internal consistency reliability of the loneliness was .83 with the sample of this study.…”

“…The psychological consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic have already come to be a public health issue. Considering the resilience approach (e.g., Arslan, 2022;Jenson & Fraser 2015;Masten, 2013) and socioecological framework (Bronfenbrenner, 1979), some individual, family, and social factors, called protective or promotive resources, reduce the influences of adversity on one's mental health and well-being and promote healthy development. Although empirical evidence widely focuses on the psychological impacts of the pandemic on various outcomes, a relatively greater neglection of research exists on what mitigates and worsens the effects of COVID-19 stressors on psychological health (Balkıs & Duru, 2022;Rajkumar, 2020).…”

“…According to the social-ecological model (Bronfenbrenner, 1979), the impact of stressors on human health differs depending on biological, social, contextual, and psychological factors (Ingram & Luxton, 2005). For instance, while the early history of psychiatric disorders (Vindegaard & Benros, 2020) and psychological inflexibility (Arslan et al, 2021b) worsen the effect of the pandemic on psychological health, some other factors like meaning in life and resilience enhance the psychological strength against it (Arslan, 2022; Arslan & Allen, 2022). Thus, discovering the possible variables that might play a role in the effect of COVID-19 stress on depression is important to have a better understanding of this relationship, and to guide the public and individual-level implications to fight the psychological outcomes of the outbreak.…”