engleski

Some predictors of risk for psychopathology in primary school aged children

A growing number od children and adolescents experience mental health problems, which interfere with their development and functioning. Studies show that 15 - 20% of children and adolescents experience different psychological problems that, which require treatment, but only a small number of them get the treatment they need. Disorders, which are not treated can affect a natural process of learning and development, and lead to psychological disorders in adulthood. The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between self-regulation, social competences, coping styles and risk for psychopathology in primary school aged children. The possibility of predicting the risk of developing psychopathology based on the aforementioned variables was also examined. The study was conducted on a sample of 320 pupils from the fifth to the eighth grade of primary schools from the city of Osijek. Instruments that were used were ; Pediatric Symptom Checklist PSC-35, Questionnaire on self-regulation, Social competence with peers questionnaire and Coping Inventory for Stressful Situations. Children have shown a low level of risk for psychopathology, moderately developed selfregulation, relatively high social competences, the frequent use of problem-ocused coping and emotion-focused coping and less frequent use of avoidance. The reusults show significant negative correlations between risk for psychopathology and self-regulation (r = -.74, p<0.01), social competences (r = -.42, p<0.01), problem-focused coping (r = -.19, p<0.01) and emotion-focused coping (r = -.16, p<0.01) and a positive correlation between risk for psychopathology and avoidance (r = -.42, p<0.01). Furthermore, self-regulation (β = -.74, p<.01) and social competences (β = .41, p<.01) appear to be negative predictors of risk for psychopathology, while avoidance (β = .15, p<.01) appears to be a positive predictor of risk for psychopathology. Finally, it is important to emphasize that the whole model explained 61% of total variance, out of which 54% was explained by self-regulation, 3% by social competencies and 4% by avoidance. Therefore, our results suggest that deficits in self-regulation are a major contributor to risk of psychopathology, which points to the possibility of predicting those risks and the importance of focusing interventions on development of self- regulation

risk for psychopathology ; self-regulation ; social competences ; coping styles ; primary school aged children

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