Journal of Interpersonal Violence 1–19 © The Author(s) 2015 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0886260515587664 jiv.sagepub.com Article Parental Support Buffering the Effect of Violence on Adolescents’ Depression: Gender Differences Angélica Quiroga, 1 Lucía López-Rodríguez, 3 and Guillermo B. Willis 2 Abstract In Mexico violence across the country has increased in recent years and has become a social problem of great importance. The continuous exposure to all types of interpersonal violence leads adolescents to cope with experiences and challenges of great risk of development deviations. Trying to find a more comprehensive understanding of violence outcomes on Mexican adolescents and its moderators, the present quantitative, non-experimental, cross-sectional correlation study was performed. Parental support (vs. other sort of social support) was proposed to be a relevant moderator factor for decreasing the negative outcomes of violence exposure on depression, and gender was predicted to play a role in this process. A two-way interaction between violence exposure and parental support was only significant in the case of adolescent girls, whereas there was no evidence of such moderation for adolescent boys. The effect of exposure to violence on girls’ depression was stronger when their parental support was relatively low than when their parental support was relatively high. Parental support may serve as a 1 Universidad de Monterrey, Garza García, Mexico 2 Universidad de Granada, Spain 3 Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED), Spain Corresponding Author: Angélica Quiroga, Treatment and Research Center of Anxiety, University of Monterrey, Av. Morones Prieto No. 4500 Pte., Garza García 66238, Mexico. Email: angelica.quiroga@udem.edu 587664JIV XX X 10.1177/0886260515587664Journal of Interpersonal ViolenceQuiroga et al. research-article 2015 by guest on May 23, 2015 jiv.sagepub.com Downloaded from