困境儿童孤独与社交焦虑对抑郁的影响——自尊的中介作用

为探讨困境儿童孤独、社交焦虑、抑郁和自尊的现状、特点、关系以及自尊在其中的中介作用,进而为困境儿童心理帮扶及救助提供依据。本研究使用儿童抑郁障碍自评量表、儿童孤独量表、儿童社交焦虑量表和自尊量表对重庆市17个区县1733名困境儿童进行调查。结果发现:(1)抑郁、社交焦虑和自尊存在性别差异,抑郁、孤独、社交焦虑和自尊存在年龄差异;(2)孤独和社交焦虑与抑郁呈显著正相关并显著预测抑郁,自尊与抑郁呈显著负相关并显著预测抑郁。(3)困境儿童的自尊在孤独和抑郁之间,社交焦虑和抑郁之间起中介作用。结果表明:困境儿童的孤独、社交焦虑既可直接影响其抑郁水平,也可通过自尊的中介作用间接影响其抑郁水平。

Impact of Loneliness and Social anxiety on Depression of Vulnerable Children:The Intermediary Role of Self-Esteem

Vulnerable children refer to the children who are temporarily or permanently out of normal family,or encountered significant physical or mental problems,including street children,orphans,AIDS children,disabled children,"the fact no one raising children"and others.Among them,children whom in fact no adult has taken up serious responsibility to bring up are called"the fact no one raising children",contains about four subclasses.The first sub-class consists of children who have been abandoned by one of their parents after the other one passed away.The second sub-class consists of children whose parents are in prison or rehabilitation,or one of their parents abandoned them while the other one was in prison.The third sub-class consists of children whose parents are both severely disabled or ill.The fourth sub-class consists of children in poor families whose parents have caught serious and rare diseases.Compared to ordinary children,vulnerable children are more exposed to negative outcomes in life such as abuse,neglect,and stigma.Consequently,vulnerable children are more susceptible to mental disorder such as anxiety,depression,and lower self-esteem.Although an association between childhood adversity and psychiatric disorders has been documented,most research has centered upon the adversary experience of orphans,AIDS children and disabled children.However,the studies about the mental development of"the fact no one raising children"are limited in China.The object of current study was to explore the status,characteristics and relationship of vulnerable children`s loneliness,social anxiety,depression and self-esteem,and to investigate the mediating effect of self-esteem,so as to provide the basis for psychological assistance to vulnerable children.To achieve this goal,a survey was administered to 1733 vulnerable children aged from 4 to 18 years from 17 districts/counties in Chongqing city.The present study was a cross-sectional study,and data were collected from June to September 2016 as part of the impact evaluation of the Vulnerable Child Care Service Project in Chongqing.All participants completed this survey which included the depression self-rating scale for Child(DSRSC),the children’s loneliness scale(CLS),the social anxiety scale for children(SASC)and the self-esteem scale(SES).The data were analyzed with SPSS 19.0 and AMOS 21.0.First,MANOVA was used to analyze the characteristics and interaction between gender and age of the participants’level of depression,loneliness,social anxiety,and self-esteem.Secondly,Spear-man correlation analysis was used to analyze the depression-loneliness relationship,the depression-social anxiety relationship,the depression-self-esteem relationship,the loneliness-social anxiety relationship,the loneliness-self-esteem relationship and the-social anxiety-self-esteem relationship.Finally,relationship of these six types was used to test the mediating effect of self-esteem for relationships among social anxiety,loneliness and depression by structural equation modeling.The results were as follows:(1)There was significant gender difference in depression,social anxiety and self-esteem(p<.05),and significant age difference in depression,loneliness,social anxiety and self-esteem of vulnerable children(p<.05).(2)The loneliness and social anxiety were significantly and positively relevant to and could significantly predict depression.Self-esteem was significantly and negatively relevant to and could significantly predict depression.(3)Structural equation modeling showed that the mediating effect of self-esteem was significant in the relationship between interpersonal disorder(loneliness and social anxiety)and depression.Not only could loneliness and social anxiety significantly predict depression,but it could also affect depression through the mediating role of self-esteem.These findings indicated that for vulnerable children,loneliness and social anxiety had effects on depression,and the effects were partially mediated by self-esteem.The findings provide external validity for mediation effect of self-esteem for the relationship between interpersonal disorder and depression,which can be used to improve the mental health of vulnerable children.