The Relationship Of Adolescent Self-concept, Maternal Depression And Adolescent Anxiety/Sepression

Depression is a negative emotion, which will not only increase the individual’s psychologicalpain, but also harm the adolescent’ physical and mental health. Meanwhile depression will have anegative impact on young people’ social adjustment in the future. Epidemiological studies ondepression suggest that there is increasing numbers of depress children and adolescents. Lots ofstudies prove that children and adolescents display a high level of internalizing problems (Hornor,2005). Due to the enormous changes in physical and psychological, the negative emotion isuniversal among adolescents. Domestic studies have shown that the prevalence of adolescentdepressive symptoms is about20%to44%. There are varieties of factors affect the formation ofyouth depression, such as maternal depression. Studies have found that whether it has reached thediagnostic criteria or not, maternal depression is one of the most significant risk factors, for thenegative development of children. The possibility is about15%-40%for children with depressedparents as well as who are suffering from depression (Pilowski, Wickramaratne, Rush,&the STARGroup,2006). Although the relationship between maternal depression and children’s adjustmentproblems has been confirmed by documents, more attentions should be paid to the mechanisms. Wecan’t ignore the initiative of adolescents, which plays an important role in one’s growth. Theoreticaland empirical studies found that cognition was an important factor for depression, such asindividual factors (such as self-concept), that may be mediators between maternal depression andadolescent anxiety/depression (Constance, Dorli,&Kathy,1990). Highlight the mechanismbetween maternal depression and adolescent anxiety/depression, will give some answer about howand why maternal depression is related to children’s development and adjustment? Therefore, theyare helpful to prevent and intervene adolescent anxiety/depression. In this study, maternal depression, adolescent self-concept (social self-concept, sportself-concept, global self-concept, and physical self-concept) and adolescent anxiety/depressionwere measured by self-report. A cross-sectional investigation was conducted to600adolescents inJinan, to explore the mechanism between maternal depression and adolescent anxiety/depression.The conclusions drawn in this thesis are as follows:1. The anxiety/depression levels of female adolescents were significantly higher than maleadolescents. The score of adolescent self-concept from high to low: global self-concept, socialself-concept, sport self-concept, and physical self-concept. These four types of self-concept hadsignificant differences in gender. Specifically, the scores of male adolescents in the four categoriesof self-concept were significantly higher than female adolescents.2. Maternal depression was significantly negative correlation with social self-concept, sportself-concept, global self-concept and adolescent anxiety/depression, but not significantly correlatedwith physical self-concept. There were significantly positive correlations between the four types ofself-concept, as well as the four types of self-concept and adolescent anxiety/depression.3. The effect of maternal depression on adolescent anxiety/depression was partially mediatedself-concept (social self-concept, sport self-concept, global self-concept). Concretely speaking, themediating effect of self-concept(social self-concept, sport self-concept, global self-concept) wasrespectively made up21.86%,16.71%,28.79%of the total effect.4. There was no gender difference in the models, in which self-concept servered as a mediatorin the relationship of maternal depression and adolescent anxiety/depression.