The Mediating Role of Satisfying Basic Psychological Needs on The Relationship Between Parenting Styles and Mental Health in Gifted Students

Living up based on authentic goals, meaning and striving to achieve personal growth have been defined as mental health. Many studies have addressed the effect of personal and contextual factors on the mental health. This study aimed to determine the relationship of parenting styles and to satisfy basic psychological needs on mental health among gifted students in Shiraz.
Participants consisted of 250 gifted school students (135 boys and 115 girls) which were selected through cluster sampling method. In this study, parental scales as social context, mental health and basic psychological needs were used. Cronbach's alpha was used to check the validity of research data, and confirmatory factor analysis was used to assess the validity of the data from the. The data were analyzed through LISREL.
The results of path analysis showed that that there is a significant relationship between parenting styles and satisfying basic psychological needs with mental health among gifted students. This means that, rejection and control style negatively and warmth and autonomy support positively effects on mental health. Also, need to autonomy and competence positively effects on mental health. Also, the satisfying basic psychological needs of involvement were mediated by parenting styles and mental health. Multiple indexes of fitness were used to evaluate the model. Which results (RMSE=0/042, GFI=0/98) showed that there is a fitness between model and data.
According to results, Proper parenting style (i.e. warmth and structure styles and lack of correction style) could lead to a higher level of competency and well-being among gifted students.