IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jijerp/v15y2018i4p591-d138008.html

Trauma and Depression among North Korean Refugees: The Mediating Effect of Negative Cognition

Author

Listed:
  • Subin Park

    (Department of Research Planning, Mental Health Research Institute, National Center for Mental Health, Seoul 04933, Korea)

  • Yeeun Lee

    (Department of Research Planning, Mental Health Research Institute, National Center for Mental Health, Seoul 04933, Korea)

  • Jin Yong Jun

    (Department of Social Psychiatry and Rehabilitation, National Center for Mental Health, Seoul 04933, Korea)

Abstract

North Korean refugees experience adaptation difficulties, along with a wide range of psychological problems. Accordingly, this study examined the associations between early traumatic experiences, negative automatic thoughts, and depression among young North Korean refugees living in South Korea. Specifically, we examined how different factors of negative automatic thoughts would mediate the relationship between early trauma and depressive symptoms. A total of 109 North Korean refugees aged 13–29 years were recruited from two alternative schools. Our path analysis indicated that early trauma was positively linked with thoughts of personal failure, physical threat, and hostility, but not with thoughts of social threat. The link with depressive symptoms was only significant for thoughts of personal failure. After removing all non-significant pathways, the model revealed that early traumatic experiences were positively associated with depressive symptoms (ß = 0.61, 95% CI = 0.48–0.73) via thoughts of personal failure (ß = 0.17, 95% CI = 0.08–0.28), as well as directly (ß = 0.44, 95% CI = 0.27–0.59). Interventions that target negative cognitions of personal failure may be helpful for North Korean refugees at risk of depression.

Suggested Citation

  • Subin Park & Yeeun Lee & Jin Yong Jun, 2018. "Trauma and Depression among North Korean Refugees: The Mediating Effect of Negative Cognition," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 15(4), pages 1-10, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:15:y:2018:i:4:p:591-:d:138008
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/15/4/591/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/15/4/591/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Mee Young Um & Hee Jin Kim & Hye Jin Kim, 2025. "Profiles of refugee-related trauma exposure and depression among North Korean refugees in South Korea: A latent class analysis," International Journal of Social Psychiatry, , vol. 71(2), pages 370-379, March.
    2. Yoanna Seong & Subin Park, 2021. "Factors Affecting Changes in the Mental Health of North Korean Refugee Youths: A Three-Year Follow-Up Study," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(4), pages 1-10, February.
    3. Osnat Keidar & David S. Srivastava & Emmanouil Pikoulis & Aristomenis K. Exadaktylos, 2019. "Health of Refugees and Migrants—Where Do We Stand and What Directions Should We Take?," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 16(8), pages 1-8, April.
    4. Chakrabarti, Sandip & Narsim, Jayanth Kumar, 2026. "Does carlessness degrade older adults’ quality of life? Insights from India and takeaways for transportation equity," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 175(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:15:y:2018:i:4:p:591-:d:138008. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager The email address of this maintainer does not seem to be valid anymore. Please ask MDPI Indexing Manager to update the entry or send us the correct address (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.