Background: In adolescence, anxiety symptoms are a common mental health problem. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the possible chain-mediating functions of fundamental psychological needs satisfaction and self-compassion in the link between adolescent anxiety and parental psychological control. Methods: Convenience sampling was used to pick 8342 middle school pupils from the Chinese regions of Sichuan and Hebei for this cross-sectional study. Participants filled out validated measures of anxiety symptoms, self-compassion, fundamental psychological needs satisfaction, and parental psychological control. To test the suggested chain mediation model, data were examined using descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, and structural equation modeling (using Mplus). Results: Anxiety symptoms were significantly predicted by parental psychological control (β = 0.192, p < 0.001). This link was significantly mediated by meeting basic psychological requirements (β = 0.136, 95% CI 0.116, 0.156), which accounted for 36.86% of the total effect. A significant chain mediation pathway was found (β = 0.040, 95% CI 0.025, 0.055), suggesting that parental psychological control increased anxiety by first undermining basic psychological needs, which in turn decreased self-compassion, even though self-compassion did not directly mediate the relationship. Conclusion: This study demonstrates that adolescent anxiety is directly predicted by parental psychological control and, more importantly, that this control is exerted through a major chain mediation pathway: by weakening basic psychological needs, which in turn diminishes self-compassion and exacerbates anxiety symptoms.
Guo et al. (Thu,) studied this question.