| Emotional neglect refers to the phenomenon that children's emotional needs are not responded or satisfied,which lead to physical and mental health developmental threat or damage.With the gradual improvement of people's material living standards,the incidence of other types of neglect has been gradually decreased.However,due to the imperceptible feature of emotional neglect and the lack of attention from the public,the research about influence of emotional neglect is still inadequate.Depression is one of the important indicators of children's mental health that has already been proved to be closely related to emotional neglect.Previous researches mainly discussed the influence of emotional neglect on individual psychosocial adaptation from the perspective of generation mechanism and the effect of negative factors(such as anxiety),while few researches explored the effect of positive factors(such as gratitude).According to the perspective of cognition adaptation theory,individual's cognition affected by the adverse environment could lead to depression.Self-compassion is a positive trait to cope with suffering through acknowledging uncomfortable feelings with self-kindness,establishing connections between personal experiences and human experiences,and accompanying pain with clear mindfulness.Similarly,gratitude is one of the highly emphasized traits in positive psychology.Gratitude is an emotional tendency to appreciate other people and events,with a significant association with self-compassion.Studies have shown that the generation and development of selfcompassion and gratitude are affected by emotional neglect and have a significant predictive effect on the occurrence of children's depression.In order to explore the influence of emotional neglect on children's depression and its internal mechanism,614 rural children from grade 4 to grade 6 in Linyi City,Shandong Province were measured through emotional neglect scale,self-compassion scale short-form(SCS-S),the trait gratitude questionnaire and children's depression inventory(CDI)in this study.The study found the characteristics of emotional neglect,self-compassion,gratitude and depression,confirmed the effect of emotional neglect on children's depression and further explored the mediating effects of self-compassion and gratitude in the relationship among emotional neglect and children's depression.The main results are as follows: 1.Emotional neglect is positively associated to children's depression.Emotional neglect could significantly positively predict children's depression.2.Emotional neglect is negatively associated to self-compassion.Self-compassion is negatively associated to children's depression.Emotional neglect significantly negatively predicts selfcompassion.Self-compassion significantly negatively predicts depression.Self-compassion plays a mediating role between emotional neglect and children's depression.3.Emotional neglect is negatively associated to gratitude.Gratitude is negatively associated to children's depression.Emotional neglect significantly negatively predicts gratitude.Gratitude could significantly negatively predict depression.Gratitude plays a mediating role between emotional neglect and children's depression.4.Self-compassion is positively associated to gratitude.Self-compassion significantly positively predicts gratitude.Self-compassion and gratitude play a chain mediating role between emotional neglect and children's depression.All in word,the above-mentioned results prove that emotional neglect was associated with children's depression in both direct and indirect pathways,indirect effect of emotional neglect through self-compassion and gratitude were significant separately or together.Specifically,emotional neglect could increase an individual's risk of depression by undermining selfcompassion and gratitude.We should realize the characteristics of rural children's psychological characteristics and the development mechanism of children's depression,pay attention to the negative effects of emotional neglect,improve the level of children's self-compassion and gratitude,reduce the risk of children's depression and strive to promote children's physical and mental health development. |
