Mackenzie Erin, McMaugh Anne, Van Bergen Penny, Parada Roberto H
Centre for Educational Research, Western Sydney University, Penrith, NSW, Australia.
Macquarie School of Education, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia.
Front Psychiatry. 2023 Mar 7;14:1040636. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1040636. eCollection 2023.
Adolescents frequently use informal support seeking to cope with stress and worries. Past research in face-to-face contexts has shown that the relationship between informal support seeking and mental health is influenced by the specific strategy used and the mode through which support is sought. To date, little research has considered the relationship between support seeking online and adolescent mental health.
In this study, structural equation modeling (SEM) examined the mediating role of co-rumination in the relationships between seeking support from friends or online and two measures of mental health: depression and anxiety. Participants were 186 adolescent girls, drawn from four independent girls' schools in Sydney, Australia. Four brief vignettes described common social stressors and participants rated their likelihood of seeking support from close friends and from informal online sources. Co-rumination was measured using a short form of the Co-rumination Questionnaire and depression and anxiety were measured with the youth version of the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale-Youth (DASS-Y).
Different patterns of findings were found for support seeking from close friends and support seeking online. First, support seeking from friends was related to lower levels of depression and anxiety while seeking support online was related to higher levels depression and anxiety. Second, co-rumination suppressed the relationship between seeking support from friends and depression, but not online support seeking and depression or anxiety.
These findings suggest that co-rumination reduces the benefits of seeking support from friends but is unrelated to online support seeking. The findings also confirm the problematic nature of online support seeking for adolescent girls' mental health, particularly in response to social stressors.
青少年经常通过寻求非正式支持来应对压力和烦恼。过去在面对面情境中的研究表明，寻求非正式支持与心理健康之间的关系受到所使用的具体策略以及寻求支持的方式的影响。迄今为止，很少有研究考虑在线寻求支持与青少年心理健康之间的关系。
在本研究中，结构方程模型（SEM）检验了共同反刍在向朋友或在线寻求支持与两种心理健康指标（抑郁和焦虑）之间关系中的中介作用。参与者为186名青春期女孩，她们来自澳大利亚悉尼的四所独立女子学校。四个简短的 vignettes 描述了常见的社会压力源，参与者对她们从亲密朋友和在线非正式来源寻求支持的可能性进行了评分。使用共同反刍问卷的简版测量共同反刍，使用抑郁、焦虑和压力量表 - 青少年版（DASS - Y）测量抑郁和焦虑。
从亲密朋友寻求支持和在线寻求支持发现了不同的结果模式。首先，从朋友那里寻求支持与较低水平的抑郁和焦虑相关，而在线寻求支持与较高水平的抑郁和焦虑相关。其次，共同反刍抑制了从朋友那里寻求支持与抑郁之间的关系，但与在线寻求支持和抑郁或焦虑之间的关系无关。
这些结果表明，共同反刍会降低从朋友那里寻求支持的益处，但与在线寻求支持无关。这些结果还证实了在线寻求支持对青春期女孩心理健康的问题性质，特别是在应对社会压力源时。
