The Relationship of Family Functioning and Suicidal Ideation among Adolescents: The Mediating Role of Defeat and the Moderating Role of Meaning in Life

Qin Yang; Yi-Qiu Hu; Zi-Hao Zeng; Shuang-Jin Liu; Tong Wu; Gang-Huai Zhang

doi:10.3390/ijerph192315895

The Relationship of Family Functioning and Suicidal Ideation among Adolescents: The Mediating Role of Defeat and the Moderating Role of Meaning in Life

Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 Nov 29;19(23):15895. doi: 10.3390/ijerph192315895.

Authors

Qin Yang^{1

2}, Yi-Qiu Hu^{1

3}, Zi-Hao Zeng¹, Shuang-Jin Liu¹, Tong Wu¹, Gang-Huai Zhang²

Affiliations

¹ School of Education Science, Hunan Normal University, Changsha 410081, China.
² School of Pre-School Education, Changsha Normal University, Changsha 410100, China.
³ School of Psychology, Hainan Normal University, Haikou 571158, China.

Abstract

Objective: To investigate the relationship between family functioning and suicidal ideation among adolescents.

Method: A total of 4515 junior and senior high school students were assessed using the Family APGAR, the Depressive Symptom Index-Suicidality Subscale, the Defeat Scale, and the Chinese Meaning in Life Questionnaire.

Results: This study found pairwise correlations between suicidal ideation, family functioning, defeat, and meaning in life. Specifically, family functioning was an influencing factor of adolescent suicidal ideation, and defeat was a mediator of the relationship between family functioning and adolescent suicidal ideation; meaning in life was found to be a moderator of the first half of the mediation process by defeat, that is, it moderated the influence of family functioning on adolescent defeat.

Conclusions: This study demonstrated that the relationship between family functioning and adolescent suicidal ideation, as well as the influence of defeat and meaning in life on this relationship, constituted a moderated intermediary model. This finding has both theoretical and practical value for the implementation of a psychosocial model of adolescent suicide prevention and intervention.

Keywords: adolescents; defeat; family functioning; meaning in life; suicidal ideation.

MeSH terms

Adolescent
Asian People
Humans
Students* / psychology
Suicidal Ideation*
Surveys and Questionnaires

Grants and funding

This paper was fortunate to be supported by two projects: The first one is the National Educational Science Planning in China “Early warning mechanism and intervention countermeasures for adolescent psychological crisis in the context of major emergencies” (Project No.: BBA200032). This project is led by Yiqiu Hu. The second one is the Research and Innovation Project of Hunan Graduate Students “The Compilation and application of the Scale of Susceptibility to Psychological Crisis for Contemporary Adolescents” (Project No.: QL20220124). The project is led by Qin Yang.