"Family shame should not be made public": witnessing parental intimate partner violence and depressive symptom among Chinese college students -- the mediating role of brooding and the moderating role of resilience.

BACKGROUND: While Western research has consistently linked witnessing parental intimate partner violence (IPV) to elevated risks of depressive symptom among adolescents and young adults, the cognitive-emotional mechanisms underlying this association remain insufficiently understood within the Chinese cultural context. Witnessing parental IPV may represent not only a family-based traumatic experience but also a process through which enduring cognitive vulnerabilities become internalized within sociocultural environments. Although such culturally embedded schema-related vulnerabilities are not directly observable, they may be manifested through maladaptive cognitive processes such as brooding rumination, thereby increasing vulnerability to depressive symptom. From this perspective, the present study examined the mediating role of brooding in the association between parental intimate partner violence witness and depressive symptom, and the moderating role of resilience, thereby providing empirical insights into this culturally embedded schema-related vulnerability framework.

METHOD: This cross-sectional questionnaire study used convenience sampling to recruit participants. The study investigated the mediating role of brooding (a maladaptive form of rumination) and the moderating role of resilience. Witness Parental IPV was measured by an adapted Chinese short-form of the Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS2), rumination was measured by the Ruminative Response Scale (RRS), resilience was measured by the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC), and depressive symptom measured by the Beck depressive symptom Inventory-II (BDI-II). A moderated parallel mediation model was conducted to test the proposed interrelationships among these variables.

RESULTS: This study involved 662 Chinese college students (44.6% male, aged 18 to 28 years, mean age = 21.66 years, standard deviation = 1.86). The findings indicate a positive correlation between the depressive symptom of these students and the level of witness parental IPV experienced. Notably, brooding, which is characterized as a maladaptive component of rumination, serves as a positive mediator in this relationship. In contrast, reflection, identified as an adaptive component of rumination, does not exhibit a similar association. Furthermore, resilience negatively moderates the relationship between brooding and depressive symptom, thereby being associated with a weaker association between brooding and depressive symptom.

CONCLUSION: This study extends existing evidence on the association between parental intimate violence witnessing (IPV) and depressive symptom among Chinese college students. The findings suggest that brooding, rather than reflection, accounts for the association between parental IPV witness and depressive symptom, while resilience moderates the association between brooding and depressive symptom. These findings provide insight into the processes through which parental IPV witness may be associated with depressive symptom in the Chinese cultural context. The results highlight brooding and resilience as potential targets for interventions aimed at reducing depressive symptom among college students witnessing parental IPV.