Dating violence and posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms in Taiwanese college students: the roles of cultural beliefs.

ABSTRACT

This study has examined the effects that young adults' experience of dating-violence victimization can have on their manifestation of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms. This study has also examined the possible roles that cultural beliefs can play in dating-violence experience, coping choices, and PTSD symptoms. This study has used self-reporting measures to collect data from a nationally stratified random sample of 1,018 college students in Taiwan. Results demonstrate that college students who had experienced dating-violence victimization reported higher levels of PTSD symptoms than those who had not. The results reveal that psychological-violence victimization and cultural beliefs have direct and indirect effects on PTSD symptoms via the mediation of young adults' use of emotion-focused coping strategies. Greater frequencies of psychological-violence victimization were associated with a greater use of emotion-focused coping, which was in turn associated with increases in PTSD symptoms. This study illustrates that traditional Chinese beliefs have played significant roles in exacerbating the risk for dating violence and PTSD, and in shaping victims' coping choices with dating violence.