The Role of Mothers’ Attachment Styles and Emotional Disorders in Feeling Lonely with the Mediation of Identity Styles of Adolescent High School Girls

The present research has been accomplished with the objective of developing a model for predicting the feeling of loneliness among adolescent high school girls in Tehran based on mothers’ attachment styles and emotional disorders and the mediating role of identity styles of adolescent high school girls. The statistical population consisted of ninth grade students (and their mothers) in the 2016-2017 academic year. The sample was selected using the cluster sampling method. The data collection instruments were the Russell Loneliness Scale (1984), the Collins and Read Attachment Style Scale (1990), the Leblond Emotional Disorders Questionnaire (1995), and the Berzonski Identity Styles Questionnaires (1996). Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the research findings, and inferential statistics were utilized in order to develop a proper model of path analysis for predicting the feeling of loneliness in students. The results indicated a significant relationship between mothers’ attachment styles, emotional problems, and identity styles and the girls’ feeling of loneliness. The findings further revealed that loneliness appears when an individual experiences a safe or unsafe attachment style concurrent with the presence or absence of mothers’ emotional problems and the influence of this relation is so much that it provides a desirable or undesirable ground for the emergence of loneliness, lack of consistent identity, and proper emotions in adolescents’ lives.