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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychiatry
Sec. Mood Disorders
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1538390
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Childhood emotional abuse is strongly linked to an increased risk of depression. However, the pathways linking the two remain elusive. Our study sought to examine how emotion dysregulation and perceived social support influence the link between childhood emotional abuse and depressive symptoms among Chinese college students. This study involved 1728 Chinese college students aged 18-24. We utilized the Emotional Abuse (EA) subscale of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire, Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS) and Perceived Social Support Scale (PSSS) to assess the interrelationships among the study variables. A moderated mediation model was constructed to elucidate these relationships. Our results indicated a positive correlation between EA, DERS, and BDI. Conversely, PSSS was negatively correlated with EA, BDI, and DERS. Notably, EA is linked to a heightened vulnerability to BDI, with DERS mediating this association. PSSS moderated both the direct path of EA on BDI and the association between DERS and BDI. Furthermore, gender difference was observed in the role of PSSS. PSSS moderated the link between EA and BDI was significant only in the male group and no longer significant under the condition of high PSSS. This study sheds light on the mediating effect of emotion dysregulation and the moderating effect of perceived social support in the connection between childhood emotional abuse and depressive symptoms. The adverse influence of childhood emotional abuse on subsequent
Keywords: childhood emotional abuse, perceived social support, Emotion dysregulation, depressive symptoms, moderated mediation model
Received: 08 Dec 2024; Accepted: 28 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Huang, Wu, Luo, Jiao, Wu, Zou, Lin, Wang and Ma. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Jiabao Lin, Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine, Guangzhou, China
Lijun Ma, Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine, Guangzhou, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.
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