Life after the pan and the fire: Depression, order, attachment, and the legacy of abuse among North Korean refugee youth and adolescent children of North Korean refugees

Abstract

© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. Given previous research on depression, history of physical abuse, family order, attachment, and parenting, we hypothesized that the physical abuse-depression relationship would be moderated by (a) family order and (b) attachment, and that (c) attachment and family order would interact significantly in predicting depression. Hypotheses were tested in South Korea in a random cluster sample of 82 youth aged 15-25 who were either themselves North Korean refugees (n= 39) or who were born to North Korean refugee mothers in China (n= 43). A qualitative interview was used to shed further light on the findings. Family order appears to be a protective factor against depression in that more order is associated with a weakened past abuse-depression relationship.