Negative self-referential emotions and mental health in youth: The importance of self-criticism.

There are many measures available that survey positive and negative emotional indicators of wellbeing in children and adolescents (Žukauskienė et al, 2015). In fact, our work (Ashra et al., 2021) identifies 98 measures of negative self-referential emotions in youth populations. However, only eight of these measures incorporated an item examining negative self-referential emotions. 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 (Löw, Schauenburg & Dinger, 2020). 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).