Article
The Impact of Child Maltreatment Experiences on the School Engagement and Depression/Anxiety of Specialized Vocational High School Students: The moderating effect of forgiveness
| e-ISSN | 2982-6845 |
| p-ISSN | 1226-4474 |
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Abstract
The study explores the effects of child maltreatment experiences on school engagement and mental health(i.e. depression/anxiety): specifically, it examines whether forgiveness has moderating effects on therelationship between experiences of child maltreatment in the past and levels of school engagement anddepression/anxiety in the present. In this study, 530 students at a specialized vocational high school inSeoul were administered a series of psychological measures regarding past child maltreatment experiences,school engagement, depression/anxiety and forgiveness. The t-test results showed that students withexperiences of child maltreatment were more likely to experience more severe forms of depression/anxiety aswell as exhibited lower levels of engagement in schools than students who had not such experiences. Theresults of the structural equation modeling analyses confirmed the moderating effect of forgiveness. Amongstudents with child maltreatment experiences, those with higher levels of forgiveness showed higher levelsof school engagement and lower degree of depression/anxiety than those with lower levels of forgiveness.The study concludes with the implication of this study on educating students with past experiences ofchild maltreatment.