Orygen, The National Centre of Excellence in Youth Mental Health, Centre for Youth Mental Health, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia.
Department of Psychiatry, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada.
Psychol Health Med. 2020 Jan;25(1):17-24. doi: 10.1080/13548506.2019.1601747. Epub 2019 Apr 5.
Alexithymia has been hypothesised to elevate risk of negative mental health outcomes for men. The growing literature related to the role of men's experience of self-conscious emotions (i.e., shame and guilt) suggests that these aversive affective experiences may be important in the relationship between alexithymia and negative mental health outcomes. The present study used parallel mediation models to determine the mediating roles of shame and guilt in the relationships between alexithymia and psychological distress and suicide-related behaviours. Online self-report data was collected from a sample of Canadian men ( = 1,000; age = 49.63, = 14.59). Participants completed measures of alexithymia, guilt, shame and depression. Adjusting for current depression symptoms, bias corrected bootstrapping (95% CIs) indicated that both shame and guilt were mediators between identification of feelings and distress ( = .67), and description of feelings and distress ( = .64). In contrast, guilt, but not shame, mediated the relationship between both identification of feelings and suicide-related behaviours ( = .38), and description of feelings and suicide-related behaviours ( = .39). Results indicate that men's difficulties identifying and describing their feelings and corresponding distress are particularly explained by shame - an aversive maladaptive emotion that promotes concealment of a perceived defective self. Conversely, guilt was more salient for men's suicide-related behaviours.
述情障碍被假设会增加男性负面心理健康结果的风险。与男性自我意识情绪（即羞耻和内疚）体验相关的不断增长的文献表明，这些令人不快的情感体验可能在述情障碍与负面心理健康结果之间的关系中很重要。本研究使用并行中介模型来确定羞耻感和内疚感在述情障碍与心理困扰和与自杀相关行为之间的关系中的中介作用。从加拿大男性（n=1000；年龄=49.63，=14.59）的样本中收集了在线自我报告数据。参与者完成了述情障碍、内疚、羞耻和抑郁的测量。在调整当前抑郁症状后，偏倚校正的自举（95%置信区间）表明，羞耻和内疚感在识别情绪和困扰（β=.67）以及描述情绪和困扰（β=.64）之间都是中介因素。相比之下，内疚感但不是羞耻感，在识别情绪和与自杀相关行为（β=.38）以及描述情绪和与自杀相关行为（β=.39）之间的关系中是中介因素。结果表明，男性在识别和描述自己的情绪及其相应的困扰方面存在困难，这主要是由羞耻感引起的，羞耻感是一种令人不快的适应不良的情绪，会促使人们隐藏自己感知到的缺陷自我。相反，内疚感对男性的自杀相关行为更为重要。
