Mediating Effect of Resilience on the Association between Emotional Neglect and Depressive Symptoms

Abstract

ObjectivePrevious studies have reported that childhood maltreatment experiences could induce biological and psychological vulnerability in depressive disorders. However, it is still unclear that type-specific effects of childhood maltreatment on psychological resilience, depressive symptoms and interactions among childhood maltreatment experiences, resilience, and depressive symptoms.MethodsA total of 438 medical students were included in the study. The Childhood Trauma Questionnaire-Short Form, the Conner-Davidson Resilience Scale, and the Beck Depression Inventory were used for measuring childhood maltreatment experiences, psychological resilience, and depressive symptoms, respectively. We investigated the effects of childhood maltreatment experiences on resilience and depressive symptoms using correlation analysis. In addition, we analyzed the mediating effect of resilience on the association between childhood maltreatment and symptoms of depression.ResultsAmong childhood maltreatment, emotional neglect was a significant predictor of the scores of low resilience and high depressive symptoms in both gender groups (all ps<0.05). Furthermore, resilience was found to be a mediator connecting emotional neglect experiences with depressive symptoms.ConclusionOur results suggest that emotional neglect has detrimental effects on mood and resilience, and clinicians need to focus on the recovery of resilience when they deal with depressive symptoms in victims of childhood maltreatment.

Meaningful living, resilience, affective balance, and psychological health problems among Turkish young adults during coronavirus pandemic

“…Additionally, findings of the study revealed that resilience mediated the effect of meaningful living and affective balance on psychological health among young adults. Consistent with these results, previous research indicated the mediating effect of resilience on psychological health problems in the context of various adverse experiences (e.g., child maltreatment, social exclusion, and stress; Arslan 2016 , 2019 ; Karaırmak and Siviş-Çetinkaya 2011 ; Lee et al 2018 ; Shi et al 2015 ). A meta-analysis study by Hu et al ( 2015 ) revealed that individuals with lower resilience reported greater depression, negative affect, and anxiety, as well as lower positive affect and life satisfaction than those with higher resilience.…”

Influence of trait anxiety, child maltreatment, and adulthood life events on depressive symptoms

“…Because our findings were obtained from studies using the CATS and Japanese subjects, measurement invariance should be confirmed. However, several studies using a different abuse questionnaire (the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire) and subjects of different countries also demonstrated that emotional abuse and neglect have a closer association with depressive symptoms than other types of abuse 32,33. Hence, neglect is considered to be the most influential factor for depressive symptoms among several types of child maltreatment.…”

The Impact of Different Types of Abuse on Depression

“…Several negative emotions are commonly self-reported by victims of psychological abuse, including anger, fear, shame, and guilt, which are also common indicators of depression [124]. Empirical research dealing with the consequences of childhood emotional abuse on adult functioning is scarce.…”