The association between adults' experiences with violence, perceived social support, and health

Abstract

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] This study examined the associations between adults' experiences with violence, spousal and non-marital perceived emotional support, and physical and mental health using hierarchical multiple regression. A sample of 3,612 adults from the Americans' Changing Lives study, 641 of whom had been attacked or assaulted at least once in their lives, was studied. Main effects, mediation, and moderation (i.e., stress-buffering) models with perceived emotional support as the potential mediator and moderator for the association between violence and health were evaluated. Findings demonstrated that the main effects model explained a significant amount of variance in infrequent depressive symptoms, life satisfaction, and self-rated health outcomes in the full sample, and in infrequent depressive symptoms, life satisfaction, and the absence of chronic conditions outcomes for violence survivors. However, none of the full mediation models explained a significant amount of variance in the health outcomes. For the moderation model, non-marital perceived emotional support moderated the association between the recency of an attack/assault using the self-rated health and functional health indicators for violence survivors, dependent on the time since the attack/assault. These findings suggest that the recency of an attack and source of support are critical to understanding the effect of violence on health, with implications for practitioners working with violence survivors.