Childhood trauma and depression in college students: Mediating and moderating effects of psychological resilience

Abstract

Purpose: Not all young people who have experienced childhood abuse and neglect will become depressed or have the same degree of depression. Psychological resilience may probably lead to part of the difference according to previous studies. To observe the association between childhood abuse and neglect and depression and analyze whether psychological resilience has mediating and moderating effects on this association.

Methods: A cross-sectional sampling with a self-report questionnaire used to measure childhood abuse and neglect, psychological resilience, and depression of college students was conducted in four universities in Hefei City, in October 2018. SPSS PROCESS was used to test the hypotheses of mediating and moderating effects.

Results: Among 4034 students, 58.1% were boys and 41.9% were girls, the average age was 20.4 years (SD = 1.4). A positive association between childhood abuse and neglect and depression was found in the population, whereas negative relationships between psychological resilience and depression, and childhood abuse and neglect were observed (r = 0.251, -0.477, and -0.196, respectively, p < 0.001). For the mediating effect of psychological resilience, the 1000-sample bootstrap demonstrated that the indirect effect was statistically significant (β = 0.073, 95% CI: 0.057-0.092). For the moderating effect, R-square increased because the interaction effect was statistically significant (ΔR2 = 0.008, p < 0.001).

Conclusions: Our study supported the conclusion of previous studies that psychological resilience mediates and moderates the process of depression. Future research can further reveal the role of psychological resilience by examining different types of childhood abuse and neglect.

Keywords: childhood abuse; college students; depression; mediating effect; moderating effect; psychological resilience.