Communication Sciences & Disorders Faculty Publications
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
11-15-2025
Abstract
Exposure to campus suicide poses a significant threat to adolescent mental health. While childhood psychological abuse (CPA) is a known vulnerability factor for depression, the mechanisms linking this early adversity to depressive symptoms (DS) following acute trauma remain unclear. This study aimed to test a chain mediation model where CPA contributes to DS through the sequential effects of psychological trauma (PT) and anxiety symptoms (AS). In a cross-sectional study of 1603 adolescents exposed to a campus suicide event, participants completed self-report measures for CPA, PT, AS, and DS. Chain mediation analysis revealed a significant direct effect of CPA on DS. More importantly, the hypothesized chain mediation pathway (CPA → PT → AS → DS) was significant and was identified as the most substantial indirect route. A key asymmetry emerged: the direct effect of CPA on DS remained robust, whereas its direct effect on AS became non-significant when controlling for DS. These findings suggest that CPA establishes a specific vulnerability to depression that, when activated by an acute stressor, initiates a pathological cascade. Interventions for suicide-exposed youth should be trauma-informed, prioritizing those with a CPA history and targeting emergent anxiety to interrupt the progression to severe depression.
Recommended Citation
Tan, T., Zhao, J., Wu, M., Zhang, X., Liu, X., Zhang, L., & Wu, J. (2025). The Effect of Childhood Psychological Abuse on Depressive Symptoms in Adolescents Exposed to Campus Suicide: The Chain Mediating Role of Psychological Trauma and Anxiety Symptoms. Behavioral Sciences, 15(11), 1595. https://doi.org/10.3390/bs15111595
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Publication Title
Behavioral Sciences
DOI
10.3390/bs15111595
Comments
© 2025 by the authors.
Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).