Legacies of Childhood Victimization: Indirect Effects on Adult Mental Health Through Re-Victimization.

The objective of the current study was to evaluate the direct and indirect effects of childhood victimization on adult mental health, focusing on adult re-victimization as a mediator. Participants (n = 279) were recruited via Amazon Mechanical Turk reported on childhood victimization, adulthood victimization, and current mental health. Sixty percent of the sample reported at least one incident of re-victimization in adulthood. Three regressions were conducted in SPSS using the PROCESS macro for mediation, and the indirect effect was tested through bootstrapping (10,000) confidence intervals. Total childhood victimization was a significant predictor of current anxiety, depression, and posttraumatic stress. For all models, adulthood re-victimization was a significant mediator of the relationship between childhood victimization and current mental health. The effects of childhood victimization on mental health are at least in part explained by the high risk of chronic re-victimization into adulthood.