Exploring the relationship between mental health literacy and psychological distress in adolescents: A moderated mediation model

Previous studies on the relationship between mental health literacy and psychological distress were rich, but little was known about the influence mechanism between them, and almost no research was found on the role of psychological resilience and subjective socio-economic status in the relationship between them. This study used a moderated mediation model to test the mediating effect of psychological resilience on the relationship between mental health literacy and psychological distress, and the moderating effect of subjective socioeconomic status in Chinese adolescents. We investigated 700 junior high school students in Inner Mongolia, China through online survey. The results are as follows: (1) Mental health literacy is a negative predictor of adolescents' psychological distress; (2) psychological resilience mediated the association between mental health literacy and psychological distress; (3) The first half of the model, that is, the relationship between mental health literacy and psychological resilience, is moderated by subjective socioeconomic status. Specifically, for adolescents with low subjective socioeconomic status, the positive predictive effect of mental health literacy on psychological resilience is obviously enhanced. The current findings would contribute to a deep understanding of the relationship among adolescents' mental health literacy, psychological resilience, subjective socioeconomic status and psychological distress, which may be of great significance to the prevention of adolescents' psychological distress.