• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.62 no.1
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• pp.185-209
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• 2010

This study aims to investigate the effect of husbands' emotional abuse on wives' depression and mediating effects of marital adjustment and coping. The subject of this study is wives of men who had completed batterer intervention programs at domestic violence counselling centers. In order to investigate the effect of emotional abuse, among the 116 questionnaires collected by wives the cases in which physical violence was reported were excluded. Ultimately, a total of 77 cases were analyzed using the Partial Least Square method of structural equation model methodology. The key findings from this study are as follows. First, the wives in this study showed a high rate of exposure to emotional abuse by their husbands although the physical violence was gone. Second, emotional abuse by husbands significantly affected depression on their wives. Third, marital adjustment was found to have a mediating effect on the relationship between the emotional abuse and the depression. Fourth, a mediating effect from passive coping was revealed; in particular, avoiding was the most powerful factor explaining the relationship between the emotional abuse and the depression. However, active coping failed to mediate the relationship between the emotional abuse and the depression.