The relationship between pschological resiliance and perceived emotional abuse in adolescents

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between emotional abuse perceived from parents and resilience in adolescence. This study included two samples as father and mather form. First sample, emotional abuse perceived from mother, consists of 1249 student attending different high schools in Isparta. Partipicants were 712 female and 537 male. Second sample includes emotional abuse perceived from father form is responded by 1234 students in total. Partipicants in second sample were 704 female and 530 male. Within the scope of this study, "Resilience and Youth Development Scale" was used to measure the resilience, "Parent Adolescent Relationship Scale (Father and Mother form)" was employed to assess emotional abuse and for the socio-demographic variables Personal Information Form was used. In data analysis, multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) depending on the type of data, correlation analysis and structural equation model was applied. Results of this study demonstrate that parental emotional abuse is a significant risk factor for the resilience. According to the results, emotional abuse perceived from parents is directly related to psychological problems and those adolescents who were exposed to emotional abuse tend to experience much psychological problems than their peers. Considering the results related to the indirect effects of parental emotional abuse on psychological problems, it has been observed that while the emotional abuse perceived from parents increases, resilience decrease. As the resilience decreases, increase in psychological problems occurs. Emotional abuse percceived from parents was found to directly affect both resilience and psychological problems significantly. It was also found that resilience differ significantly in terms of socio-demographic variables. The obtained findings have been discussed from the point of educators, psychological counselors and the ones working in mental health department, and some suggestions are made.