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. 2025 Jun 3:16:1521224.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1521224. eCollection 2025.

Mental health literacy as a moderator: association between psychological vulnerability and adolescent anxiety

Qianying Hu #  1 , Yingyan Zhong #  1 , Jianhua Chen  1 , Rumeng Chen  1 , Enzhao Cong  1   2 , Yifeng Xu  1
Affiliations

Mental health literacy as a moderator: association between psychological vulnerability and adolescent anxiety

Qianying Hu et al. Front Psychol. .

Abstract

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.

Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted on 1,591 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.

Conclusion: Those findings suggest educators should develop curriculum resources to strengthen the cultivation of mental health literacy among adolescents to promote adolescent mental health.

Keywords: adolescent; anxiety; mental health literacy; moderator; psychological vulnerability.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
The moderating effect of mental health literacy (MHL) on the relationship between psychological vulnerability and anxiety. The low group is defined as the total score mean of the variable minus one standard deviation, while the high group is defined as the total score mean of the variable plus one standard deviation.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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