The Relation Between Emotional Expressive Flexibility And Mental Health:the Mediating Role Of Self-esteem

With the further implementation of quality-oriented education and the concept of comprehensive development,the emotional problems and emotional-related behavioral problems of adolescents have attracted attention from all parties.Improving the flexibility of adolescents’ emotional regulation is the key to helping them avoid emotional distress in the changing environment and academic pressure.Emotional expressive flexibility is a typical emotional regulation index,which is divided into two dimensions: emotional expressive suppression ability and enhancement ability.The two have different effects on two factors of adolescents’ mental health.One of the goals of this research is to analyze the correlation between the two dimensions of emotional expressive flexibility and adolescents’ positive/negative mental health indicators.In addition,this study will further explore whether self-esteem has a mediating role in the relationship between emotional expressive flexibility and adolescents’ mental health indicators,so as to carry out work related to improving emotional expressive flexibility and self-esteem for high school students in the future,and then help high schools students to reduce pathological emotions,enhance positive emotions,and improve their mental health as a whole to provide scientific basis and educational recommendations.A total of 945 high school participants from several high schools in Urumqi,Kashgar,and Hotan completed the Child and Adolescent Flexible Expressiveness(CAFE)Scale together with a battery of scales assessing anxiety,depression,Life satisfaction and self-esteem scale.Data analysis uses Amos17.0 to perform a series of confirmatory factor analysis on each dimension of the scale and uses SPSS21.0 to perform descriptive statistical analysis,correlation analysis on the original data obtained and test the mediation effect;The results obtained are as follows:(1)Boys have a higher overall level of mental health(anxiety and depression scores are significantly lower than girls,and life satisfaction scores are higher than girls),while girls’ expressive enhancement ability is significantly higher than boys.(2)The two dimensions of high school students’ emotional expressive flexibility(emotional expressive suppression ability and enhancement ability)and self-esteem scale are significantly positively correlated with positive mental health indicators(life satisfaction),and significantly negatively correlated with negative mental health indicators(anxiety,depression).(3)Self-esteem plays a partially mediating role between the two dimensions of emotional expressive flexibility and the two factors of mental health.(4)The self-esteem level of boys is more likely to be affected by the ability to suppress emotional expression.In general,higher emotional expressive flexibility(emotional expressive suppression ability and enhancement ability)significantly predicts higher positive factors of mental health and fewer pathological emotions through the mediation of self-esteem.Therefore,it is possible to improve the level of self-esteem of high school students by cultivating and enhancing their flexibility of emotional expression in a targeted manner,thereby getting closer to a state of complete mental health with lower symptoms of mental illness and higher subjective well-being.