Resilience to childhood abuse and neglect in college students

Abstract

Research on outcomes of childhood maltreatment tends to examine only one type of maltreatment (usually sexual abuse) and generally ignores gender differences in resilience by failing to consider outcomes for men and women separately. This study sought to address those issues by examining the prevalence of maltreatment in a college sample and identifying the relationship between maltreatment and college adjustment in men and women. Results indicate that maltreated men in college have more resilient outcomes than maltreated women in college and several reasons for this difference were discussed. Overall, negative life events and social/emotional resources are thought to be two important variables in understanding the relationship between maltreatment and adjustment. Future studies can extend the results of this study by examining maltreatment in both college and community samples, collecting data from a larger sample of individuals, and perhaps using a more stringent criterion for classifying maltreatment in the sample.