This study aims to understand the effects of childhood emotional abuse experience on the mental health of adolescents, and also to verify self-esteem and aggression as mediating factors out of diverse maladaptive behaviors by emotional abuse.
The research subjects were 492 middle school students including 208 male students and 284 female students in Gradel-3 in J city. The SPSS 20.0 & AMOS 20.0 Program were used for data analysis. Concluding the descriptive statistics analysis(mean, standard deviation, frequency, percentage, skewness, kutosis) for the characteristics of main factors and research subjects, the Cronbach's α value was examined as the verification of validity of variables to verify hypotheses. Performing the correlation analysis for the verification of multicollinearity and relations between variables, the structural equation model was used to evaluate the goodness-of—fit of the research model, and also to verify the relations between variables. After analyzing the final model, the statistical significance of multiple-mediating effects was verified by applying the Bootstrapping method.
The results of this study are as follows. In the results of analysis for the verification of normality, all of them were significant, so that the supposition of the structural model verification was satisfied. In the results of verifying the goodness-of-fit of the measurement model through the confirmatory factor analysis, there were no problems with reliability and validity, so that the mediating effects of self-esteem and aggression on the effects of emotional abuse experience on the mental health of adolescents were statistically significant. In the results of examining the path coefficient of the research model, the direct effects of all the paths were significant. Regarding the direct/indirect effects, in the relations between variables, the emotional abuse experience decreases self-esteem, which is led to the increase of aggression. When self-esteem was increased, the aggression and mental health got lowered. The emotional abuse experience had direct effects on the mental health, and it was indirectly significant by passing self-esteem and aggression.
In the results of analyzing the multiple-mediating effects, the whole mediating effects of self-esteem and aggression on the effects of emotional abuse experience on the mental health of adolescents were statistically significant. In the verification of mediating effects with the use of phantom variable, they were statistically significant as well.
This study put efforts for the diversity of research model, so that adolescents could have healthy mental health. The significance of this study is to provide the important implication that it would be necessary to develop the field-centered efficient project development model through organic connections, by reinforcing support through education and counseling, on top of surrounding interest and conversation helpful for them to grow into correct adolescents.