Effect of Childhood Emotional Abuse on Depressive Symptoms in Adulthood: Rumination as a Mediator and Resilience as a Moderator

Abstract

This study examined the relationship between retrospective childhood emotional abuse (CEA) and adult depressive symptoms by investigating the mediating role of cognitive rumination and the moderating role of psychological resilience within a Transylvanian-Hungarian sample. A cross-sectional sample of Hungarian-speaking adults (N = 223, M_age = 24.9 years) completed an online battery of validated self-report measures assessing childhood emotional abuse, depressive symptoms, rumination, and resilience. Mediation and moderation analyses were conducted using a bootstrapping procedure with 5,000 resamples. The findings supported a partial mediation model, indicating that rumination represented a substantial indirect pathway linking childhood emotional abuse to depressive symptoms. Specifically, the indirect effect accounted for approximately 74.7% of the total effect. Furthermore, resilience significantly moderated the relationship between childhood emotional abuse and depressive symptoms (b = -0.04, p < .001), suggesting that the association between early emotional abuse and adult depressive symptomatology was weaker among individuals reporting higher levels of psychological resilience. These findings are consistent with cognitive vulnerability models of depression and suggest that repetitive negative thinking and resilience processes may play important roles in understanding individual differences in psychological adjustment following childhood emotional abuse. Although the cross-sectional design precludes causal inferences, the results provide additional evidence from an understudied cultural context and may have implications for interventions aimed at reducing maladaptive rumination and strengthening resilience among individuals exposed to early emotional adversity.