Abstract
There are many measures available that survey positive and negative emotional indicators of wellbeing in children and adolescents [1]. In fact, our work identifies 98 measures, designed to measure negative self-emotions in youth populations [2]. However, only eight of these measures incorporated a negative self-referential emotion item or subscale; that is, an item, or items, where the subject and the reference are directed toward the self in the final measure. This is important because negative self-referential emotions, especially self-criticism, are key antecedents of mental health disorders such as anxiety, depression and eating disorders [3]. In this commentary, we discuss why measures relating to self-critical emotions are fundamental for children and adolescents, and much needed to comprehensively evaluate mental health and emotional wellbeing in youth. We believe our considerations here will enable scholars to: (i) develop robust self-criticism measures for children and adolescent populations, and (ii) reliably evaluate social and emotional interventions employed in schools and beyond, that are aimed at improving wellbeing through, in part, addressing self-critical thinking styles (e.g., compassion-based interventions).
Keywords
Self-criticism, Mental health, Youth, Wellbeing, Child practitioners