The Capacity to Be Alone Moderates Psychopathological Symptoms and Social Networks Use in Adolescents during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Longitudinal associations between capacity to be alone, life satisfaction, self-compassion, anxiety, and depression among Chinese college students

Although the world has entered the post-pandemic period, the mental health and life satisfaction of college students still need to be addressed. However, previous literature has primarily focused on negative variables and has paid little attention to positive variables, such as self-compassion and the capacity to be alone. Therefore, this longitudinal study aims to investigate the relationships between the capacity to be alone, self-compassion, life satisfaction, depression, and anxiety among college students. This study analyzed data from 1460 Chinese college students who completed an online survey at two time-points one year apart. We employed cross-lagged analysis and constructed longitudinal mediation models to explore the relationships between five variables (i.e., capacity to be alone, self-compassion, life satisfaction, depression, and anxiety). Our findings indicate that depression and life satisfaction could negatively predict each other over time. Self-compassion in wave 1 could negatively predict depression and anxiety in wave 2. Higher life satisfaction in wave 1 was associated with a lower capacity to be alone in wave 2. We also found reciprocal positive predictive relationships between depression and anxiety, and life satisfaction and self-compassion. Life satisfaction mediated the relationship between self-compassion and psychopathological variables (i.e., depression and anxiety). Additionally, self-compassion mediated the association between life satisfaction and psychopathological variables and the association between capacity to be alone and psychopathological variables. Our study highlights the significance of early identification and intervention in depression and anxiety. We also discovered the possible self-soothing function of self-compassion as well as the importance of fostering positive personal characteristics.

Psychopathological risk stability and change in a sample of mothers and preschool children before, during and after the peak of COVID-19 pandemic

Numerous studies have found that the COVID-19 epidemic and the measures to stop it have had a substantial impact on the mental health of the general population. Nevertheless, the majority of this research only looked at the variations in the degree of psychopathological symptoms in individuals before and after the first wave of the pandemic. In a sample of N = 380 preschoolers and their mothers assessed through the Symptom Check-List/90-R and of the Child Behaviour Check-List, the present study aimed at exploring psychopathological risk in mothers and their offspring's dysregulation levels before (T1), during (T2) and after (T3) the peak of COVID-19 pandemic. Our main results showed that mothers' relational distress increased from T1 to T2 and then increased again from T2 to T3. Moreover, maternal aggressiveness, hostility, and anxiety scores significantly decreased from T1 to T2 but slightly increased from T2 to T3. In children, dysregulation levels increased from T1 to T2 but decreased from T2 to T3. Children of mothers with clinical scores at the SCL-90/R showed significantly higher dysregulation problems at T1, T2 and T3 than children of mothers with scores below the clinical threshold. This study adds to previous literature in that it evaluates stability or change in maternal and offspring scores not only in the pre-pandemic period and during the first wave of the pandemic, but it also considers the subsequent months, focusing on a broad range of maternal symptoms, rather than assessing depressive and anxiety symptoms as most of previous research did.

Antecedents of social media addiction in high and low relational mobility societies: Motivation to expand social network and fear of reputational damage

Contrary to previous studies on the antecedent factors of social media addiction, we focused on the social environmental factor of relational mobility (i.e., the ease of constructing new interpersonal relationships) and investigated its relationship with social media addiction. People in low relational mobility societies have fewer opportunities to select new relationship partners and consequently feel a stronger need to maintain their reputation. We hypothesized that (1) people in low relational mobility societies are more strongly addicted to social media because they estimate that greater reputational damage will be caused by ignoring messages and (2) people in low relational mobility societies estimate greater reputational damage than actual damage. We conducted two online experiments with 715 and 1,826 participants. Our results demonstrated that (1) there is no relationship between relational mobility and social media addiction and (2) people in both high and low relational mobility societies overestimate reputational damage. Furthermore, we demonstrated that the social media addiction mechanism differs between societies: (3) people in low relational mobility societies estimate greater reputational damage, whereas (4) people in high relational mobility societies are more motivated to expand their social networks; both mechanisms strengthen their social media addiction. Based on these results, we propose interventions for moderating social media addiction in both high and low relational mobility societies.

Twenty years of emotional-behavioral problems of community adolescents living in Italy measured through the Achenbach system of empirically based assessment (ASEBA): a systematic review and meta-analysis

Background

This is a systematic review and meta-analysis of emotional and behavioral problems among Italian community adolescents in the last 20 years, as assessed through the ASEBA questionnaires CBCL 6-18, YSR 11-18 and TRF 6-18. Research questions address: (1) pooled means of problems' scores in questionnaires scales; (2-3) variations in scores according to sociodemographic and time-related factors, and studies' quality; (4) trends in research with ASEBA instruments along with other outcomes, e.g., psychopathological symptoms.

Methods

A systematic literature review of Scopus, EBSCO, PubMed, Web of Science, and ProQuest databases using the PRISMA 2020 guidelines was conducted on November, 2021, and of grey literature on December, 2021. The quality of studies was assessed through the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale.

Results

Forty-four studies were eligible for the systematic review, of which 34 were included for meta-analysis. Results showed that: (1) emotional-behavioral problems were higher when assessed by the CBCL and lower when assessed by the YSR compared to normative data; (2) there were no gender and age differences, except for higher scores of Anxious/Depression symptoms, in girls. (3) internalizing and attention problems increased over the last two decades. (4) major trends of Italian research investigate adolescents' emotional behavioral problems concerning attachment, comorbid symptoms, especially internet addictions, and eating disorders.

Discussion

Despite some limitations (e.g., low-medium quality of most studies, no data on the TRF, under-representation of some geographical areas, some search-related choices), these data provides Italian practitioners and international researchers of some parameter to evaluate Italian adolescents emotional-behavioral problems. Registered on PROSPERO N. CRD42022299999.

Parental psychosocial factors predicting adolescents' psychological adjustment during the surging and remission periods of COVID-19 in China: A longitudinal study

BACKGROUND

Parents play a critical role in adolescents' psychological adjustment, especially in stress response. Few studies have investigated parental impact on adolescents' psychological adjustment in the pandemic. The longitudinal study examined how parental psychosocial factors at the surging period of the pandemic (T1) in China predicted adolescents' anxiety and depression concurrently and at the remission periods three (T2) and six months (T3) later.

METHODS

Middle and high school students and their parents from three schools in Shanghai, China, completed online surveys on March 10, 2020 (T1), June 16, 2020 (T2), and Sep 25, 2020 (T3). Adolescents' anxiety/depression levels were assessed by matching self- and parent-reports at T1, T2, T3, and parents reported their psychological state (emotion and psychopathology), pandemic response (appraisal and coping), and perceived social support (PSS) at T1.

RESULTS

Parental positive/negative emotions, anxiety, depression, control-appraisal, forward- and trauma-focus coping style and PSS were all significantly related to their children's anxiety/depression at T1. All factors, except coping style, predicted adolescents' anxiety/depression at T2 and T3, even after controlling for T1 adjustment levels. Parental positive emotion and depression had the strongest impact on adolescents' adjustment.

LIMITATIONS

Some participants didn't complete the surveys at later time points, and the participants were only recruited in Shanghai.

CONCLUSIONS

The study found that parents' psychosocial factors played a pivotal role on adolescents' psychological adjustment during COVID-19, highlighting the need to provide help to parents who were suffering from potential psychological distress.