Perceived abusive supervision and suicidal risk in Chinese graduate students: the chain mediating roles of autonomy need and professional identity

Abstract Background: The suicide issue of graduate students related to the strained relationships with their academic supervisors has triggered wide concern and heated discussion recently. The study aimed to explore the relationship between abusive supervision graduate students perceived and the suicidal risk of them, and the mediating roles of autonomy need and professional identity. Method: An online survey was conducted among 233 graduate students and the perceived abusive supervision, autonomy need, professional identity, suicidal ideation, depressive symptoms and psychache (psychological pain) were measured. Results: It was found that the perceived abusive supervision positively correlated to the latent variable suicidal risk (suicidal ideation, depressive symptoms and paychache as three indicators), and worked through the respective mediating effects of autonomy need, professional identity and the chain mediating effect of them. The total indirect effect size was 0.130, accounting for 27.78% of overall effect size. These findings deepen the understanding of the influence of abusive supervision under high education setting and provided practical insights into psychosocial intervention from the perspective of the self-determination theory and the model of professional identity formation.