Several experiences and personality patterns can travel together, making it hard to tell which ones are linked to depression and anxiety. This study tries to separate those overlapping signals—and the answer is not quite what you might expect.

University students are at high risk for anxiety and depression. The study’s main objective was to separate the part of symptom severity uniquely attributable to childhood emotional abuse and three associated personality-related patterns. Think of several people pulling on the same rope: if they all pull together, it is difficult to tell who added how much force.

The study aimed to tell these overlapping influences apart. The study assessed the unique contributions of personality variables and childhood emotional abuse while taking current physical activity, pandemic impacts, and sex into account. These variables are frequently confounded, meaning that their effects can become mixed together.

Separating each contribution was intended to clarify risk and protective factors affecting university students during a stressful time. Because pandemic restrictions prevented in-person testing, participants completed an online survey covering personality variables, childhood emotional abuse, physical activity, pandemic impacts, depression, and anxiety.

The survey was completed remotely at a time and location of each participant’s choosing, and a check for poor effort was included. All three personality variables, childhood emotional abuse, and male sex emerged as significant predictors of depression. For anxiety, all three personality variables and childhood emotional abuse emerged as significant predictors.

Neither pandemic impacts nor physical activity levels accounted for unique variance in either model after the other variables were controlled. The study considered the four overlapping variables simultaneously rather than looking at one variable at a time, because their overlap may have confounded earlier results.

Each of the four variables accounted for unique variance in both depression and anxiety after several other possible risk and protective factors were controlled. The lack of an association between current physical activity and mental health was unexpected, given previously documented benefits of physical activity on well-being.

It was also surprising that physical activity was not more strongly related to the personality variables or childhood emotional abuse, despite earlier links between exercising less and these factors. The study has limitations. It was carried out during the pandemic, when quarantine, social distancing, and restrictions on in-person testing were in place.

Because the data were collected online, certain things may have been measured less accurately, and participants may have been less attentive than they would have been in person. The study found that childhood emotional abuse and each of the three personality-related patterns made a unique contribution to predicting mental-health outcomes.

That distinction matters because the variables are correlated with one another; treating them separately can make earlier links look less trustworthy than they really are. Childhood emotional abuse and three personality-related patterns each contributed independently to depression and anxiety in university students.

That clearer picture could help mental-health care address more than one source of risk at a time.