Factors That Influence the Relationship Between Childhood Abuse and Adulthood Depression

Abstract

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a global problem which brings bad effects to physical and mental health. Childhood abuse experience also brings severe outcomes for adulthood physical health and psychological health, especially depression. Research shows that childhood abuse predicts adult depression symptoms directly and indirectly through factors like personality, allostatic load and genes. Other factors like psychological resilience, gender, family environment, type of childhood maltreatment (CM), culture differences are also effective. In this paper, these are classified into internal factors (personality, allostatic load, psychological resilience, gender, self-acceptance and self-esteem, genes) and external factors (family environment, type of childhood maltreatment, culture difference). Personality, allostatic load, psychological resilience, self-acceptance and self-esteem, genes, family environment and type of childhood abuse all have effective influence on relationship between CM and MDD. There is something special with gender and culture difference. There still doesnt have enough literature to support the effective function of the two with significant statistics, but both of them have influence on childhood abuse and depression. Some researchers believe that childhood abuse could predict depression through a number of factors changed by gender or culture. Therefore, further studies are needed for the effects of gender or culture difference.