A Study on the Moderating Effect of Self-Esteem in the Impact of Parental Abuse on Adolescent Depression

The purpose of this study was to test the moderating effect of self-esteem on the impact of parental abuse on depression by targeting adolescents, which is the period when abuse by parents is the highest.The 14th year of data from the Korean Children's Panel was used, and data from 1,326 firstyear middle school students was used.Reliability analysis, descriptive statistics, frequency analysis, and correlation analysis were performed using SPSS Win 24.0 ver., and the moderating effect was analyzed using SPSS PROCESS macro 4.3 ver.(Model 1).First, there were differences in abuse from parents and self-esteem depending on the gender of the adolescent.Male students suffered more abuse from their parents and had higher self-esteem than female students.Second, Abuse from parents had a positive effect on adolescent depression.As the abuse from parents became more severe, the adolescent's depression worsened.Third, adolescents' self-esteem was found to moderate the relationship between abuse from parents and depression.In the group with high self-esteem, depression did not increase significantly even as abuse from parents increased, but in the group with low self-esteem, depression increased sharply as abuse from parents increased.Based on the results of this study, we proposed ways to reduce abuse from parents, reduce depression in abused youth, and improve self-esteem in abused youth.