Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2018 Jan;15(1):62-69.
doi: 10.4306/pi.2018.15.1.62. Epub 2018 Jan 16.

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

Sang Won Lee  1 , Geum Ye Bae  1 , Hyo-Deog Rim  1 , Seung Jae Lee  1 , Sung Man Chang  1 , Byung-Soo Kim  1 , Seunghee Won  1
Affiliations

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

Sang Won Lee et al. Psychiatry Investig. 2018 Jan.

Abstract

Objective: Previous 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.

Methods: A 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.

Results: Among 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.

Conclusion: Our 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.

Keywords: Depression; Emotional neglect; Resilience.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. The mediating effect of resilience on the relationship between previous emotional neglect experiences and current depressive symptoms. (A) and (B) represent a direct effect of emotional neglect on depressive symptoms and resilience, respectively. The mediating effect of resilience is shown in (C). The changed values after controlling for gender were described within the bracket. Total scores of CD-RISC and BDI are used for resilience and depressive symptoms, respectively. *p<0.05, ***p<0.001. CD-RISC: Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale, BDI: Beck Depression Inventory.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Brewin CR, Andrews B, Valentine JD. Meta-analysis of risk factors for posttraumatic stress disorder in trauma-exposed adults. J Consult Clin Psychol. 2000;68:748–766. - PubMed
    1. Kessler RC, McLaughlin KA, Green JG, Gruber MJ, Sampson NA, Zaslavsky AM, et al. Childhood adversities and adult psychopathology in the WHO World Mental Health Surveys. Br J Psychiatry. 2010;197:378–385. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Nanni V, Uher R, Danese A. Childhood maltreatment predicts unfavorable course of illness and treatment outcome in depression: a meta-analysis. Am J Psychiatry. 2012;169:141–151. - PubMed
    1. Bernet CZ, Stein MB. Relationship of childhood maltreatment to the onset and course of major depression in adulthood. Depress Anxiety. 1999;9:169–174. - PubMed
    1. Eluvathingal TJ, Chugani HT, Behen ME, Juhasz C, Muzik O, Maqbool M, et al. Abnormal brain connectivity in children after early severe socioemotional deprivation: a diffusion tensor imaging study. Pediatrics. 2006;117:2093–2100. - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources