A Longitudinal Study Of The Relationship Between Childhood Maltreatment And Early Adolescent Depression

In recent years,the dropout,self-injury and even suicide of teenagers caused by depression have emerged in an endless stream.Survey results show that more than half of teenagers have mild or severe depressive symptoms.This study,based on the age characteristics of adolescents,focuses on the depression of junior high school students who have just entered the early adolescence,because teenagers in this period are experiencing drastic physical and psychological changes,have stronger and more fragile self-esteem and polarized emotional characteristics,they face unfamiliar environment,classmates and great academic pressure.More likely to develop psychological and behavioral problems such as depression.Ecosystem theory emphasizes the role of Microsystems in individual physical and mental development,including various factors in the family and school.Many studies have shown that abusive family experiences can not only positively predict an individual’s current depression level,but also have a profound impact on an individual’s depression level in adulthood.While all of these studies only looked at the predictive effect of abuse on the present or future,it is unclear whether it affects the rate of change in depression.In addition to abuse experience,differences in family structure and gender may also lead to differences in the initial level and rate of change of adolescent depression.Therefore,this study divided the subjects into male and female groups and the only group and non-only group for systematic comparison when discussing the change of adolescent depression attainment.In addition,most studies have not considered the possibility that depression may have a negative effect on adolescents’ levels of abuse or both,and the underlying mechanisms remain to be explored.The cognitive-diathesis stress model holds that depression is the result of the interaction between inner diathesis and external environmental events,and the poorer inner diathesis is,the more likely depression is to occur.Because of their strong self-awareness,early adolescent students are more sensitive to external evaluation and fear negative evaluation from classmates or teachers.Previous studies have shown that when the level of negative evaluation of fear is high,the individual social stress will surge and lead to depression.Individuals who live in adverse external environment for a long time care more about others’ evaluation.Studies also show that individuals who have been abused have stronger fear of negative evaluation,which aggravates the generation of adolescent depression.Therefore,it is speculated that fear of negative evaluation may play a bridge role between abuse experience and depression,but there is no systematic study on the relationship between the three.Therefore,based on ecosystem theory and cognitive-diathesis stress model,this study discussed the variation trend and individual differences of early adolescent depression,and took negative evaluation fear as the mediating variable to reveal the longitudinal mechanism of abuse experience on early adolescent depression.In order to arouse the attention of domestic and foreign researchers to the negative factors of early adolescent depression and abuse experience,but also to provide more directions for the practical workers to intervene in adolescent depression,improve the level of adolescent mental health from many aspects.A total of 528 junior high school students were enrolled in this study.Three one-year follow-up studies were conducted with a 6-month interval.The overall study was divided into two parts.In the first study,independent sample T-test was used to investigate whether there were significant differences in the levels of abuse experience and depression in the three measurements,and then repeated measure analysis of variance was used to determine whether there were significant changes in abuse experience and depression within 1 year.Secondly,an unconditional latent growth model was constructed to explore the changing trend of depression in early adolescents.In order to investigate the individual difference of depression trend in early adolescents,gender and one-child status were grouped.Finally,abuse experience was included into the conditional latent growth model as a predictive variable,and the main effect of abuse experience on the initial level and progression rate of early adolescent depression was examined after controlling for gender and one-child status.In the second study,Mplus8.0 was used to establish a cross-hysteresis model to investigate the longitudinal relationship between abuse experience and depression,and then a second-order hysteresis model was established to study the longitudinal mediating effect of negative evaluation fear between the two.Through the above two studies,the following results are obtained:(1)The overall level of depression in early adolescence increased gradually over the course of a year.(2)There are differences in the changes of adolescent depression in terms of gender and one-child status.The growth rate of depression in girls is significantly higher than that in boys,and the initial level and growth rate of depression in non-only children is significantly higher than that in only children.(3)The higher the level of abuse experience,the higher the initial level of adolescent depression and the faster the growth rate.(4)Abuse experience and early adolescent depression have cross-time interaction relationship,each other as a cause and effect.(5)Fear of negative evaluation plays a positive mediating role in the longitudinal influence of abuse experience on the level of depression in early adolescents.