How does growth mindset affect mental health of high school students during the COVID-19 epidemic? The role of grit and coping strategies

Abstract

BackgroundThe outbreak of COVID-19 epidemic continues to unfold globally, which harms the public’s mental health. Adolescents’ mental health is affected by social isolation and lockdown during the COVID-19 epidemic. The implicit theory of thoughts-emotion-behavior states that individuals with a growth mindset believe that thoughts, emotions, and behaviors can be changed through effort and tend to persist in pursuing higher goals and maintain enthusiasm as well as cope with stress resiliently, thus having higher gritty and levels of mental health. This study aimed to explore the role of grit and coping strategies in the influence of the growth mindset on adolescents’ mental health during the COVID-19 epidemic period.MethodsA total of 1564 participants (Mage = 17.02, 760 boys, 804 girls) from three high schools in China were recruited to complete The Self-report Questionnaire-20, The Growth Mindset Scale, The Short Grit Scale, and The Coping Style Scale to evaluate mental health, growth mindset, grit, and positive coping strategies, respectively.ResultsThe results showed that growth mindset has no significant indirect effect on mental health through grit but has a significant indirect effect on mental health through coping strategies. The results of chain mediation analysis showed that grit and coping strategies play chain mediating roles between growth mindset and adolescents’ mental health.ConclusionThe findings suggest that cultivating a growth mindset, developing grit, and teaching adolescents to adopt positive coping strategies can improve adolescents’ mental health.

Implicit theories of mental health predict anxiety and depression during the COVID‐19 pandemic in China: The mediating effect of coping styles

“…This study also suggested that the coping style mediates the relationship between implicit theories of mental health and people's mental health. Consistent with previous findings that during the COVID‐19 pandemic, a positive reframing coping strategy mediated the effect of French university students' implicit theory of emotion on their depressive symptoms (Le Vigouroux et al., 2021), and in China, student's growth mindset had a significant indirect effect on mental health through coping strategies (Zhang, Qi et al., 2022). Focusing on implicit theories of general mental health rather than emotion, this study examined both incremental and entity theories, and specifically investigated the role of active and passive coping styles, which is more comprehensive in understanding the underlying mechanisms through which implicit theories of mental health impact people's mental health.…”

Mediating effects of achievement goal orientation on the relationship between growth mindset and learning engagement in medical students: A cross-sectional descriptive study

“…In this study, the last 3 questions were used to evaluate students’ growth mindset. The Cronbach α was 0.85 in the previous study [20] and 0.88 in this study.…”