ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Health Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1521224
Mental Health Literacy as a Moderator: Association between Psychological Vulnerability and Adolescent Anxiety
Provisionally accepted
- 1Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China
- 2Shanghai Mental Health Center, Shanghai, China
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Background: Adolescent anxiety's underlying mechanisms remain unclear, which undermines adolescents' social functioning. This study examined the moderating role of mental health literacy in the relationship between adolescent anxiety and psychological vulnerability.A cross-sectional study was conducted on 1591 middle and high school students through online questionnaires in January 2023 in Guizhou Province, China. The Psychological Vulnerability Scale, Mental Health Literacy Scale, and Screen for Child Anxiety-Related Emotional Disorders were used to measure psychological vulnerability, mental health literacy, anxiety, and its five dimensions, including panic/somatic, generalized anxiety, separation anxiety, social phobia, and school phobia in adolescents, respectively.Results: Psychological vulnerability was significantly correlated with adolescent anxiety and its dimensions (p < 0.05). The moderating role of mental health literacy on the relationship between psychological vulnerability and adolescent anxiety was left marginally significant (p = 0.07). Furthermore, mental health literacy significantly weakened the relationship between psychological vulnerability and social phobia (p < 0.05).The upward trend of anxiety as psychological vulnerability increases among the high mental health literacy group was significantly slower than the low mental health literacy group.Those findings suggest educators should develop curriculum resources to strengthen the cultivation of mental health literacy among adolescents to promote adolescent mental health.
Keywords: psychological vulnerability, Anxiety, Mental health literacy, Adolescent, moderator
Received: 01 Nov 2024; Accepted: 15 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Hu, Zhong, Chen, Chen, Cong and Xu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Yifeng Xu, Shanghai Mental Health Center, Shanghai, China
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