An examination of the relationship between childhood trauma, resilience and subjective well-being in adulthood

This study has been conducted to analyze the relationship among childhood trauma (child abuse & neglect), resilience and subjective well being of young adults. The study sample of this research was 408 young adults consisted of; senior undergraduates enrolled to various universities as well as graduate students from different universities which participated in the education certificate program at Marmara University in the academic year of 2019-2020. The data were obtained via the "Personal Information Form" developed by the researcher herself, "Childhood Trauma Questionnaire" (Bernstein, Fink, Handelsman, Foote, 1994; Şar, Öztürk, İkikardeş, 2012), "Psychological Resilience Scale for Adults" (Friborg, Hjeindal, Rosenvinge, 2003; Besim ve Çetin, 2011) and "Subjective Well-Being Scale" (Tuzgöl-Dost, 2004). The statistical analysis of the data collected in the study was tested in the SPSS 21.0 program. Following data collection, versatile extreme values were determined by calculating Mahalanobis distance values, to examine the extreme values. In data analysis process, initially; the "frequency and percentage values" of the characteristics of the study group were calculated. The descriptive values, skewness, kurtosis and reliability of three scales used were tested respectively. The data gathered to examine the significant differences of the young adults' childhood trauma, resilience and subjective well being levels in regard to demographic variables were tested via Independent t-test, one way ANOVA and one way MANOVA when the normal distribution assumption was valid. Cases in which the normal distribution assumption was not met, "Mann Whitney U" and "Kruskal Wallis tests" as the "non-parametric tests" were applied. In order to examine the relationship among variables, correlation analysis ("Pearson correlation and Spearman Rank coefficient") were used. Finally the extent to which childhood trauma and resilience predict subjective well being was calculated via stepwise regression. According to the research findings; the male young adults were found to be significantly more exposed to trauma compared to the female young adults. Childhood trauma exposure was found not to be differentiated according to smoking and alcohol use status among young adults although "emotional abuse", "total trauma" scores were identified significantly differ among participants living in low socio-economical status and suffered from physical illnesses. Additionally, female young adults were found to have high resilience scores due to the social support they received, and being married identified to be significant among young adults high in resilience. Family cohesion and perception of self as sub-dimensions of resilience scores found to be significantly different among young adults who did not have any psychological problems. Finally, in regard to subjective well being, differences according to gender was not statistically significant although the high scores of subjective well being were found to differ among young participants who were married and belong to high socio-economical status and not having any psychological problems. Based on the findings examining the relationship between variables; a moderate and negative significant correlation between subjective well being and childhood trauma's sub-dimensions, a moderate and positive significant correlation between subjective well being and resilience, and a low but significant correlation between childhood trauma and resilience have been found. Due to the findings revealing to what extent childhood trauma and resilience predict subjective well being; "perception of self", "perception of future" as "sub-dimensions of resilience" as well as childhood total trauma variables appeared to be the significant predictors of subjective well being. In brief, these three variables explain 52.3% of the total variance in subjective well-being scores.