Child Abuse/Neglect and Depressive Symptomatology: The Mediating Roles of Early Maladaptive Schemas

Abstract

Recently, there has been a growing interest in identifying the mechanisms of how child abuse/neglect predicts the development of psychopathology in adulthood. In that respect, schema therapy explains the origin of psychopathology with early maladaptive schemas. This study aimed to explore the mediator roles of five different schema domains between child abuse/neglect and depressive symptomatology relationship in a university student sample. The sample of this study consisted of 414 undergraduate and graduate students from the various universities of Turkey [312 (75.4%) female, and 102 (24.6%) male], whose ages ranged between 18 and 32 (M = 21.69, SD = 2.08). Parallel Multiple Mediation Analysis for five schema domains showed that among all schema domains only impaired autonomy/performance schema domain-mediated the relationship between child abuse/neglect and depressive symptomatology. Individuals who reported higher levels of childhood abuse and neglect tended to develop more maladaptive schemas from impaired autonomy/performance schema domain, and as a consequence, were at increased risk for depressive symptoms. Results were discussed in light of the relavant literature.