Does Parental Psychological Control Affect Non-Suicidal Self-Injury of Adolescents via Depression?

Abstract

This study aimed to examine the effect of parental psychological control on adolescents’ non-suicidal selfinjury and verify whether this effect is mediated by depression. In the first survey of 647 middle and high school students, only those who had experiences of non-suicidal self-injury were selected (136 adolescents). For data analysis purposes, descriptive statistics for each measured variable and Pearson’s correlation coefficients among research variables were calculated. In addition, Process Macro - Model 4 by Hayes (2013) was used to investigate the mediating model. Finally, the bootstrapping method was applied to confirm the significance of the mediating effect. The results of this study were as follows. First, parental psychological control and depression directly affected the frequency of non-suicidal self-injury among adolescents. Second, depression mediated the relationship between parental psychological control and non-suicidal selfinjury. In conclusion, the more parents controlled their children’s psychological factors, the higher the level of depression among adolescents, and as a result, the higher the frequency of non-suicidal self-injury. These findings suggest that educational intervention on parental psychological control is important to prevent and reduce non-suicidal self-injury; however, psychotherapy intervention that reduces the levels of depression should also be required.