Domestic Violence and Depression: Social Support and Self-Esteem as Mediators

Background and Purpose:

Marital violence, more generally known as domestic violence, has severe mental health outcomes on their victims (Caretta, 2008). In particular, the relationship between domestic violence and depression has long been the topic of social work research as millions of individuals exposed to violence suffer from severe depression. However, it has also been noted that not all victims of domestic violence suffer from depression. Some victims somehow cope with the event and manage their lives. Then, what attributes to such differences in their mental health outcome? This study is an attempt to explore the dynamics of the relationship between domestic violence and depression of Korean men and women. Using stress-coping model as a theoretical framework, this study seeks to understand how the negative mental health outcome of domestic violence may be mediated by external and internal personal resources such as social support and self-esteem. It is expected both social support and self-esteem mediate the effect of domestic violence on depression.

Methods:

This study uses “the 2006 Korean Welfare Study” for its analysis. A total number of 9,291 married men and women who reported of having experienced either physically or verbally abused are included in the study. The degree of domestic violence was measured using CTS2 (Revised Conflict Tactics Scales) and a Korean version of CESD was used to measure depression. Rosenberg's self-esteem scale was used to measure the internal resource and perceived level of social support as an external resource was measured by asking “how much do you think (family, relatives, friends, neighbors) help you when you are in need?” on a 5-point Likert scale. A recursive structural equation modeling (SEM) is used to test the hypothesized model and to determine pathways among the variables. Both SPSS 15.0 and AMOS 7.0 are employed for statistical analyses.

Results:

Findings show that the strongest predictor of depression among abused spouses was self-esteem (β=.-481). The degree of domestic violence had direct effect (β=.153) and indirect (β=.053) effect on depression. The extent of domestic violence also had direct effect on self-esteem (β=-.110). The result of mediation test shows that the direct coefficient from domestic violence to depression declined in the presence of self-esteem, the mediating variable, indicating a partial mediating relationship. Social support was also found to mediate the effect of domestic violence on depression.

Implications:

The findings provide several practical implications on interventions for domestic violence victims. As social support has widely been identified as a strong coping resource for individuals at risks, this study provides supportive finding that their perceived social support indeed mediates the effect of domestic violence on depression, reducing the likelihood of being depressed when strong social support is in hand. Self-esteem, on the other hand, partially mediated the relationship between domestic violence and depression, also indicating needs to attend to the self-esteem issues of domestic violence victims during intervention. It is thus, recommended that practitioners working with domestic violence victims address their self-esteem and social support as means of reducing the possibility of developing depression.