The serial mediating effects of different types of academic stress on depression among high school students: a two-layer protective mechanism based on conservation of resources theory.

OBJECTIVE: To examine theoretically informed association patterns linking different types of academic stress to depression among high school students and to investigate the roles of parent-child communication and self-efficacy within a proposed moderated serial mediation model.

METHODS: Using convenience sampling, a cross-sectional survey was conducted among 967 high school students in northwestern China. Measures included four types of academic stress (parental, self-imposed, teacher, and social stress), perceived stress (PSS-14), loneliness (UCLA-LS3), parent-child communication (PACS), self-efficacy (GSES), and depression (KADS-11). A moderated serial mediation model was tested with PROCESS Model 83 and 5,000 bootstrap resamples, specifying perceived stress and loneliness as sequential mediators and parent-child communication and self-efficacy as moderators. An EBICglasso psychometric network analysis was further used to provide supplementary descriptive evidence to support the findings.

RESULTS: All four types of academic stress were indirectly associated with depression through the serial pathway involving perceived stress and loneliness, with all 95% confidence intervals excluding zero. Self-imposed stress showed the strongest indirect effect (b = 0.036), whereas teacher stress showed the weakest (b = 0.013). Social stress additionally showed a distinctive association with loneliness beyond perceived stress (β = 0.22, p < 0.001), and this indirect effect (b = 0.176) was the largest among all pathways. Parent-child communication significantly attenuated the association between self-imposed stress and perceived stress (β = -0.19, p < 0.001). Self-efficacy significantly attenuated the association between perceived stress and loneliness (β = -0.22, p < 0.001), showing a stronger moderating association than parent-child communication. In the network analysis, perceived stress showed the highest strength and closeness centrality, self-efficacy showed the highest betweenness centrality, and social stress retained a direct edge with loneliness.

CONCLUSION: The findings suggest that different types of academic stress may be linked to adolescent depression through a cognitive-interpersonal pathway involving perceived stress and loneliness. Parent-child communication and self-efficacy may serve as protective factors within this association pattern. These results provide a basis for more targeted interventions for adolescent depression in school contexts.