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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychiatry
Sec. Adolescent and Young Adult Psychiatry
Volume 16 - 2025 |
doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1494074
This article is part of the Research Topic Youth Mental Health, Particularly in Asian Populations View all 49 articles
"Meaninglessness makes me unhappy": Examining the role of a sense of alienation and life satisfaction in the relationship between the presence of meaning and depression among Chinese high school seniors
Provisionally accepted- College of Psychology, Liaoning Normal University, Dalian, Liaoning Province, China
This study constructed a chain mediation model to explore the mediating effects of a sense of alienation and life satisfaction on the relationship between the presence of meaning and depression among Chinese high school seniors. Six hundred and twenty-one senior high school students (17.09 ± 0.45 years, 266 boys) were recruited and participated in the study. Participants completed the Adolescent Students’ Sense of Alienation (ASAS), Meaning in Life Questionnaire (MLQ), Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS), and Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI- II). Results revealed that (1) the sense of alienation and life satisfaction play a chain mediating role between the presence of meaning in life and depression among Chinese high school seniors; (2) the sense of alienation plays the mediating role between the presence of meaning in life and depression; and (3) there are gender differences in the chain mediation model of the influence of the presence of meaning in life on depression. This study reveals the potential pathways through which the presence of meaning in life affects depression among Chinese high school seniors and can provide support and basis for future mental health interventions for high school seniors.
Keywords: Presence of meaning, life satisfaction, sense of alienation, Depression, high school senior
Received: 10 Sep 2024; Accepted: 22 Jan 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Hou, Hu and Liu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Jinsheng Hu, College of Psychology, Liaoning Normal University, Dalian, Liaoning Province, China
Zhihong Liu, College of Psychology, Liaoning Normal University, Dalian, Liaoning Province, China
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