The Relationship Between Adolescents' Forgiveness and Non一suicidal Self-iniury: The Mediating Role of Rumination and the Moderating Role of Peer Acceptance
Non-suicidal self-injury, also known as NSSI, is a kind of maladaptive behavior that deliberately destroys one's own body without suicidal intention. NSSI has a destructive impact on the physical and mental health of individuals. Researchers have found that individuals who have experienced non-suicidal self-injury have a much higher risk of various psychological disorders including suicide compared to normal people. The study found that the peak period of NSSI behavior development was in adolescence. On the one hand, adolescents are faced with internal problem as a result of dramatic changes in physiological development, and their psychological development lags behind. On the other hand, adolescents have to face many external challenges such as academic pressure, interpersonal communication and emotional management. With those challenges, NSSI happens easily in adolescence, which not only affects the academic development of teenagers, but also threatens their life safety. Most previous studies on NSSI have focused on the impact of risk factors (such as emotional regulation disorder) on NSSI, but there is little known about how protective factors affect NSSI. Therefore, in present study, forgiveness is considered an internal protective factor and peer acceptance is considered an external protective factor to investigate the mechanism of their effects on rumination and NSSI among adolescents.
In this study, a total of 473 adolescents were recruited from developed coastal areas and developing central areas and they completed a questionnaire set including Heartland Forgiveness Scale, the Ruminative Response Scale, the Peer Acceptance questionnaire, and the Non-suicidal Self-injury Scale. Results showed that: (1) Forgiveness significantly negatively predicated adolescent non-suicidal self-injury; (2) The relationship between forgiveness and non-suicidal self-injury was mediated by rumination; (3) The relationship between forgiveness and rumination was moderated by peer acceptance. Compared with the relatively high peer acceptance, the prediction of rumination is stronger when the peer acceptance level is relatively low; (4) Peer acceptance moderated the mediating role of rumination on the relation between forgiveness and non suicidal self-injury. When adolescents are less accepted by their peers, they need to rely more on their own forgiveness to reduce rumination, thus reduce non-suicidal self-injury behavior.
This study found that adolescents' forgiveness, rumination and peer acceptance plays an important role in NSSI, and revealed the psychological mechanism of forgiveness on adolescents' NSSI, which provides enlightenment on the intervention path of NSSI for educators.
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