The purpose of this study is in assessing the mediated effects of evaluative concerns perfectionism and moderated mediated effects of self-compassion in the relationship of the parentification experience in the growth period of college students and psychological maladjustment (depression, anxiety). To that end, an online survey was conducted for male and female college students from colleges in Korea, and a total of 440 answers were used as the final analysis material. The collected materials were analyzed by utilizing SPSS 25.0 and SPSS Macro. The results of this study are as follows.
First of all, significant mediating effects of evaluative concerns perfectionism was found in the relationship of parentification experience in the growth period of college students and psychological maladjustment (depression, anxiety). These results imply that not only does parentification experience in the growth period impact psychological maladjustment of children but cause tendencies of evaluative concerns perfectionism.
Secondly, in the relationship of evaluative concerns perfectionism and psychological maladjustment (depression, anxiety), although the moderating effects of self-compassion were not significant in anxiety, they were significant in depression. It was verified that higher degrees of self-compassion mitigate impact of tendencies of evaluative concerns perfectionism on depression.
Lastly, the moderated mediating effects of self-compassion were verified to be significant in the path of parenting experience in the growth stage impacting depression with evaluative concerns perfectionism serving mediating roles. Such research results show that self-compassion served as protecting factor in the path of parentification experience impacting depression mediated by evaluative concerns perfectionism.
Based on these results, it is anticipated that basic data on possible interventions to alleviate psychological maladjustment in counseling or education in which college students who have experienced parentification in their growth stages complain problems such as depression or anxiety will be provided.