The Effects Of Self-compassion On Adolescents’ Mental Health And Underlying Psychological Mechanisms ——Based On Cross-sectional And Longitudinal Study Designs

Individuals in adolescence are very vulnerable to mental problems,hence exploring potential protective factors that benefit adolescent mental health development has great theoretical and practical significance.Empirical studies showed that self-compassion can protect and promote mental health.However,most of these studies are conducted under western cultural contexts,studies upon self-compassion and adolescent mental health under Chinese culture are less investigated,and there exists problems such as incomplete mental health indicators or the lack of longitudinal perspective.The current study aimed to explore the instant and cross-time effects of self-compassion on mental health,and the multi-mediation effects of basic needs satisfaction and emotion regulation difficulties in Chinese adolescent,with self-compassion as independent variable,positive mental health（affect balance,and life satisfaction）and mental internalizing problems（depression,anxiety,stress）as dependent variables.Our study provides theoretical evidence for promoting adolescent mental health.Our study comprises of two studies following.Study 1 was a cross-sectional study,involving 369 senior high school students from Shanghai and Guangxi.Path Analysis Model results showed that self-compassion was negatively correlated with depression,anxiety,stress and internalization problems,and positively correlated with life satisfaction,affect balance and subjective well-being.Mediation effects analysis results showed that basic needs satisfaction significantly mediated the relationships between self-compassion and mental health in Chinese adolescents,while emotion regulation difficulties significantly mediated the relationships between adolescent selfcompassion and depression,anxiety,stress,affect balance and internalizing problems.In addition,basic needs satisfaction and emotion regulation difficulties mediated the relationships between adolescent self-compassion and depression,anxiety,stress,affect balance and internalizing problems serially.Our results preliminarily validated our hypothesis model.Study 2 was a longitudinal study with three-point data.511 high school students from Shanxi province were recruited to explore the effects of self-compassion on adolescent mental health indicators,and whether basic psychological need satisfaction and emotional regulation difficulties could be mediators longitudinally.Cross-lagged analysis results showed that: 1)The positive longitudinal effects between positive mental health（i.e.,affect balance,life satisfaction）and self-compassion in Chinese adolescents were bidirectional.2)Emotional regulation difficulties longitudinally correlated with self-compassion,depression and anxiety.Adolescent self-compassion at T1 could reduce the levels of emotion regulation difficulties at T2,and thus decreased the levels of depression,anxiety and stress at T3,while anxiety at T1 could reduce the levels of self-compassion at T3 through increasing the levels of emotion regulation difficulties at T2.Meanwhile,we observed bidirectional longitudinal associations between emotion regulation difficulties and self-compassion,anxiety and stress,respectively,and the predictive effects of depression on emotion regulation difficulties a year later.3)Basic psychological needs satisfaction positively predicted selfcompassion and affect balance,and negatively predicted depression,stress a year later.Our result showed that self-compassion has protective and sustainable impacts on adolescent mental health.We not only observed the bidirectional relations between selfcompassion and positive mental health（i.e.,affect balance,life satisfaction）,but also found that self-compassion helped improve and prevent the occurrence of mental health problems（i.e.,depression,anxiety,stress）.At the same time,basic psychological needs satisfaction and emotion regulation difficulties may be one of the psychological mechanisms in between.Combined with cross-sectional and longitudinal study designs,our study examined specific protective effects of adolescent self-compassion on mental health,which promoted the concretization of adolescent mental health research field and deepened our understanding of Chinese adolescent mental health and selfcompassion,and provided theoretical evidence and practical suggestions in preventing mental problems,and promoting adolescent mental health.