Examining the Associations Between Childhood Trauma, Resilience, and Depression: A Multivariate Meta-Analysis

Childhood trauma has been associated with increased depression; however, resilience has been found to reduce this association.

Present analyses were based on multivariate meta-analytical techniques, an extension of univariate meta-analysis. All computations were performed using the metafor package and the metaRmat package from R. Bivariate associations (r) between trauma, resilience, and depression were utilized as the pooled effect sizes.

Following Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines, articles were coded based on the following inclusion criteria: (a) sample participants had a history of childhood trauma; (b) studies included one of the four instruments of trait resilience; (c) studies included measures of individual outcomes of depression; (d) studies were published in peer-reviewed journals, dissertations, book chapters since 2009, or provided by leading scholars who had yet to publish their data; (e) all manuscripts were written in English; and (f) studies included the Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficient (r) for the effect size.

We systematically coded for the following items for each study: year of publication, type of report, peer-reviewed, funding, sampling strategy, sample size, gender, mean age, country of study, measure of resilience, measure depression, and measure of childhood trauma.

The pooled correlations indicate that trauma, resilience, and depression are significantly associated. There were no significant differences in symptoms of depression for high versus low reports of resilience for individuals with a history of trauma. Year of publication was a significant moderator for the associations between trauma, resilience, and depression. Resilience significantly mediated the association between trauma and depression.