Effect Of Looming Cognitive Style On Depression In High School Students:A Study Of The Role Of Psychological Inflexibility And Intervention

In recent years,the issue of depression in young people has received increasing attention from the community.Depression not only causes psychological problems and physical harm to students,but also leads to many family and social problems,thus preventing and intervening in adolescent depression has far-reaching implications.The Ministry of Education,the National Health Commission and other departments have regarded depression prevention education as an important task to safeguard the physical and mental health of adolescents.Among the many explanations for depression,the cognitive theory of depression states that depression is closely related to cognitive biases,and that depressed people are prone to cognitive biases such as exaggeration or reduction,and extreme thinking.Among these,Looming Cognitive Style,as a cognitive bias that arises when individuals face negative events,is the tendency to exaggerate the assessment of threat and believe that the threat is approaching,leading individuals to develop anxiety,depression and negative cognition,and to use cognitive or behaviour avoidance as a self-protection and coping strategy.Long-term negative thoughts and avoidance can lead to the development of stable negative schema,the inability to focus on the present moment to obtain real information,the inability of the mind and body to adapt flexibly to changing situations,and the lack of motivational adaptation,i.e.psychological inflexibility.This suggests that Looming Cognitive Style and psychological inflexibility may interact with each other and form a vicious circle,which in turn may cause heavy mental stress and distress to the individual and increase depression.Therefore,this study examines the link between Looming Cognitive Style,psychological inflexibility and depression in order to explore the factors and mechanisms that influence depression in high school students,and to suggest ways to prevent and intervene in depression in adolescents through the use of Acceptance Commitment Therapy(ACT).To explore the relationship between depression and Looming Cognitive Style and psychological inflexibility among high school students and the effectiveness of ACT intervention,this survey was split into two parts: the first part used the Implicit Maladaptive Style Questionnaire,the Depression Self-Rating Inventory,the Chinese version of the Acceptance Action Questionnaire and the Chinese version of the Cognitive Fusion Questionnaire to investigate 725 high school students from two schools in Yunnan Province to explore the relationship between Looming Cognitive Style,psychological inflexibility Based on the quantitative results of Study 1 and the theory of Acceptance Commitment Therapy(ACT),we designed and implemented a group counselling programme on the theme of enhancing psychological flexibility(i.e.reducing psychological inflexibility),and explored the effectiveness of ACT group counselling on enhancing psychological flexibility and The effectiveness of ACT group counselling in enhancing psychological flexibility and improving depression among high school students was investigated by collecting and post-test data from the intervention participants.The study concludes:1.More than half(68.6%)of the high school students surveyed in this study had varying degrees of depression,with more than half(37%)of them having moderate to severe depression,and there were significant differences in depression among high school students by gender and grade,with girls having significantly higher levels of depression than boys;depression was more prominent in sophomore year.2.High school students’ Looming Cognitive Style scores in this study were generally high,indicating that many students tend to overestimate the threat of negative events and perceive the risk to be increasing rapidly.There were also significant differences in the Looming Cognitive Styles of high school students by gender and grade level,with girls tending to overestimate the risk of negative events more than boys;sophomore students had higher levels of Looming Cognitive Styles.3.The high school students investigated in this study generally had higher levels of psychological inflexibility.In addition,there were significant differences in psychological inflexibility among high school students by gender,grade level,and family residence,except for female students,who had higher levels of psychological inflexibility in their sophomore year,and students whose place of origin was urban,who had higher scores of psychological inflexibility than those in rural areas.4.There was a significant positive relationship between depression,Looming Cognitive Style and psychological inflexibility among high school students,and Looming Cognitive Style and psychological inflexibility significantly predicted depression.In addition,mental rigidity mediated the relationship between Looming Cognitive Style and depression,and Looming Cognitive Style not only directly influenced depression,but also indirectly influenced depression through mental rigidity.5.The ACT group counselling intervention designed and implemented in this study was effective in reducing depression by intervening in the psychological inflexibility of high school students and enhancing their psychological flexibility.