Mediating effect of fear and externality of happiness in the association between psychological maltreatment and psychological well-being

ABSTRACT

This study aims to explore whether psychological maltreatment predicts young adults’ psychological well-being through fear of happiness and externality of happiness. The current study included 490 young adults from a public university in an urban city in Turkey. Participants were 36% male, and they ranged in age from 18 to 39 years (M= 21.77, SD = 2.40). Findings from the study revealed that psychological maltreatment had a significant predictive effect on psychological well-being, fear of happiness, and externality of happiness. Further, fear of happiness and externality of happiness mediated the impact of psychological maltreatment on psychological well-being. These findings indicate that fear and externality of happiness are important sources that can help to explain the association between childhood psychological maltreatment and psychological well-being among young adults. Therefore, there is a need to design a more comprehensive prevention and intervention approach for improving people’s psychological well-being in the context of psychological maltreatment.

KEYWORDS:

• Psychological maltreatment
• psychological well-being
• happiness
• well-being
• young adults

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed consent informed

Consent was obtained from all participants included in the study

Data availability

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article