The Relationship Between Family Functioning and Distress Tolerance in Female Students: The Mediating Role of Self-esteem

Distress tolerance is increasingly playing an essential role in the onset and continuing of psychological trauma and prevention and treatment. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between family functioning and distress tolerance with the mediating role of self-esteem in female students.

This research method was fundamental in terms of purpose, and the data collection method was correlation and structural equation modeling. The study population included all ninth-grade female students in District 3 of Tehran in the academic year 2021-2022. The voluntary sampling method selected 220 students as the research sample. A Family Performance Questionnaire (Epstein et al., 1983), Distress Tolerance Questionnaire (Gaher and Simmons, 2005), and Self-Esteem Questionnaire (Rosenberg, 1965) were used to collect data. Structural equation modeling was performed using Amos24 software.

The findings showed that the structural model of the research has a good fit. The results showed that there is a direct relationship between family functioning and self-esteem (t = 9.02 and β = 0.63) and between self-esteem and distress tolerance (t= 6.30 and β= 0.58), but there was no direct relationship between family functioning and distress tolerance (t= 1.96 and β= 0.15). The results also showed an indirect relationship between family functioning and distress tolerance.

According to the results, there is a relationship between family functioning and distress tolerance of female students due to their self-esteem. Special attention to causal factors is suggested in formulating psychological interventions to increase the distress tolerance of female students.