The Relationship Between Mother-adolescent Conflicts And Depression Of Junior High School Students

Depression has been an important topic in psychological fields,for it can pose profound negative impacts on individual development.The severity and prevalence of depression increase rapidly in adolescence,and gradually become one of the main emotional problems troubling today’s adolescents.Among all the influencing factors related to adolescent depression,negative family environment is one of the most specific factors.It is proved that there is a significant relationship between parentadolescent conflicts and adolescent depression.Meanwhile,the Theory of Positive Psychology points out that intentional self-regulation(ISR)is a protective factor to promote the positive development of adolescents.At present,there are few domestic studies on intentional self-regulation.Researchers have inclined to study the influence of school resources and peer relationship,barely concerned parent-adolescent conflicts and adolescent depression.Furthermore,parent-adolescent conflicts reach its peak in junior high school period,and mother-adolescent conflicts are usually more severe than father-adolescent conflicts.Considering of that,this study is organized to verify the relationship between mother-adolescent conflicts and depression of junior high school students,and to explore the effect of intentional self-regulation as well.This study consists of two sub-studies:Study One used a cross-sectional design to verify the relationship between motheradolescent conflicts and adolescent depression,and to test whether intentional selfregulation could play as a moderator.In this study,totally 556 junior high school students were tested offline with Mother-Adolescent Conflict Questionnaire,Childhood Depression Inventory and localized SOC Questionnaire.The results showed that:(1)The levels of mother-adolescent conflict and adolescent depression reported by girls were significantly higher than those of boys.(2)The level of intentional self-regulation in grade 7 was significantly higher than that in grade 9.(3)The level of motheradolescent conflicts could positively predict depression in junior high school students.Meanwhile,intentional self-regulation played as a moderator in this process,alleviating the effect of mother-adolescent conflicts and adolescent depression.Study Two was conducted on the basis of Study One,with 15 semi-structured interviews were recorded.Based on the Social Information Processing Model(SIP),this study was supposed to explore whether there are differences in the internal mechanism of coping mother-adolescent conflicts between high-ISR adolescents and low-ISR adolescents.The results showed that:(1)In the step of encoding,high-ISR respondents inclined to think that their mothers and themselves will keep "calm and understanding",and their mothers were more likely to resolve conflicts in a positive manner;low-ISR respondents were more sensitive to “anger” in their mothers and "sadness and depression" in themselves,inclining to think that their mothers were more likely to respond conflict negatively.(2)In the step of response access,high-ISR respondents were willing to "seek solutions" and inclined to resolve conflicts through "communication";low-ISR respondents usually stopped at "transferring attention ",and inclined to achieve the superficial harmony with their mothers through "escapism and cold war".(3)In the step of response decision,high-ISR respondents inclined to choose "communication",generating more diverse and flexible coping strategies,and being willing to make active reconciliation with their mothers;low-ISR respondents more inclined to choose "tacit approval" and "obedience" with much more limited coping strategies,displaying negative attitude towards interaction with their mothers.Generally speaking,junior high school students with high intentional selfregulation can rationally recognize parent-adolescent conflicts and deal with it effectively,which alleviates the effect of parent-adolescent conflicts on adolescent depression to some extent.