Impact of Emotional Abuse and Neglect on Depressive Symptoms with Moderating Role of Emotional Intelligence among University Students

Emotional abuse and emotional neglect have a huge impact on an individual’s mental health (St Clair et al., 2015). They have a huge prevalence not in Pakistan only but internationally (Kumari, 2020). Many studies have studied their impact on children and adolescents but very few investigated their impact on university students (Simpson, 2018). So, the current study examined their impact on depressive symptoms among university students. This study also aimed to study whether emotional intelligence moderates the relationship between emotional abuse, neglect, and depressive symptoms among 400 Pakistani university students. A cross-sectional research design was used and data was collected through the Convenient Purposive sampling technique. SPSS and Process Macro 4.1 version was used for data analysis. Results indicated that emotional abuse and neglect were positively related to depressive symptoms and they all were negatively correlated with emotional intelligence. Emotional abuse and neglect positively predicted depressive symptoms among university students. Further, it was found that emotional intelligence significantly moderates the relationship between emotional abuse, emotional neglect, and depressive symptoms. This indicates that students who have higher levels of emotional intelligence suffer less from depressive symptoms because of emotional abuse and neglect and vice versa. Findings indicate that emotional intelligence can be considered as a protective factor against the impacts of emotional abuse and neglect, and there is a need to work on it. So, the mental health practitioners can devise updated programs to improve emotional intelligence.