Childhood emotional maltreatment and psychological richness among Chinese adolescents: The mediating effect of gratitude.

Background: Childhood emotional maltreatment impairs adolescents' well-being, but less is known about the link between childhood emotional maltreatment and adolescents' psychological richness, a new form of well-being and the mechanism underlying the link.

Objective: This study aimed to reveal the longitudinal effect of childhood emotional maltreatment on psychological richness as well as the mediating role of gratitude among Chinese adolescents.

Methods: A total of 577 (354 females; Mage = 16.19 years, SDage = 0.50 years) adolescents participated in this study by voluntarily completing questionnaires. First, we used a regression analysis to test the longitudinal relationship between childhood emotional maltreatment and adolescents' psychological richness. Next, we explored the mediating role of gratitude using a mediation analysis at two time points. For all of the above analyses we used gender, age, hedonic well-being and eudaimonic well-being as covariates.

Results: The regression analysis revealed a negative relationship between childhood emotional maltreatment and psychological richness four months later in teenagers. The results of the mediation analysis showed that the association between psychological richness and childhood emotional maltreatment was mediated by gratitude.

Conclusions: This research demonstrated that childhood emotional maltreatment had a negative predictive role in teenagers' psychological richness and gratitude acted as a mediator in this relationship. Thus, enhancing gratitude levels may be an important intervention.