Observational Study
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World J Psychiatry. Feb 19, 2025; 15(2): 100135
Published online Feb 19, 2025. doi: 10.5498/wjp.v15.i2.100135
Mediating role of self-esteem in the relationship between parental disapproval of the child and alexithymic personality
Elif Yöyen, Ali Rıfat Kılıç
Elif Yöyen, Department of Psychology, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Sakarya University, Sakarya 54050, Türkiye
Ali Rıfat Kılıç, Department of Clinical Psychology, Institute of Social Sciences, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Göztepe, Marmara University, İstanbul 34722, Türkiye
Co-first authors: Elif Yöyen and Ali Rıfat Kılıç.
Author contributions: Yöyen E and Kılıç AR designed and coordinated the study, they contributed equally to this manuscript as co-first authors, performed the experiments, and acquired and analyzed the data; Yöyen E wrote the manuscript; and all authors approved the final version of the article.
Institutional review board statement: The study was approved by Marmara University Social Sciences Research Ethics Committee (Approval No. 2023-51 - 2023/30).
Informed consent statement: All study participants provided informed written consent prior to study enrollment.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors report no relevant conflicts of interest for this article.
Data sharing statement: There are no additional data.
STROBE statement: The authors have read the STROBE Statement-checklist of items, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the STROBE Statement-checklist of items.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Elif Yöyen, Assistant Professor, MD, Department of Psychology, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Sakarya University, Esentepe, No. 2 Ring Road, Sakarya 54050, Türkiye. elifyoyen@sakarya.edu.tr
Received: August 7, 2024
Revised: November 3, 2024
Accepted: December 9, 2024
Published online: February 19, 2025
Processing time: 159 Days and 13.4 Hours
Core Tip

Core Tip: This study showed that the type of family in which a child grows up and parental disapproval in childhood affected the child’s self-esteem and led to alexithymic personality traits. The child’s self-esteem partially mediated the relationship between parental disapproval and alexithymia. Family type was also important for alexithymia. A chaotic family type had a positive effect on alexithymia and a negative effect on the self-esteem variable, whereas the approving and perfect family types had a negative effect on alexithymia and a positive effect on self-esteem and protected the child in terms of alexithymic personality traits.