Abstract
BackgroundWith rapid development of China’s economy, there were over 68.7 million left-behind children (LBC) in China whose mental health has become a problem of public concern. The present cross-sectional study aimed to investigate the status of mental health and its associated factors of LBC aged 3–16 years old in both rural and urban areas.MethodsA total of 4187 children (aged 3–16), including 1471 LBC and 2716 non-left-behind children (NLBC), were recruited from 50 communities (22 in urban areas and 28 in rural areas) in Guangdong, China in August, 2014. The mental health problems were assessed using the Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ).ResultsNo statistically significant difference of SDQ subscales scores about difficulties were found between LBC and NLBC on the whole participants as well as in rural areas or in urban areas within the same age group after adjustments were made (all p > 0.05). However, compared with NLBC in the same areas, urban LBC tended to have higher prosocial behaviours scores, while rural LBC had the lowest prosocial behaviours scores not only in the whole age group but also in different age subgroups (p < 0.05). Besides, compared with urban LBC, rural LBC were not worse in SDQ subscales scores except for prosocial behaviour at 7–9 age group (p = 0.003). Furthermore, higher paternal educational level and longer duration of parental absence, were associated with less difficulties in both rural and urban LBC. Besides, shorter duration of talk per-time but higher communication frequency were associated with less difficulties in rural LBC.ConclusionsThe present study demonstrated that in general, no difference of mental health problems were found between LBC and NLBC. Besides, longer duration of parental absence, shorter duration of talk per time but more communication frequency, and higher paternal educational level tend to have better development of mental health. The findings reinforce the importance of the stability of caregivers and the effective parent-child communication for Chinese rural LBC.
Highlights
With rapid development of China’s economy, there were over 68.7 million left-behind children (LBC) in China whose mental health has become a problem of public concern
One-third of participants were LBC, in which 86.7% of them lived in rural areas, and 13.3% lived in urban areas (p < 0.001)
Additional file 1: Table S1 presented the basic characteristics of the experience of being left-behind of LBC including age at separation, duration of parent absence, communication frequency, et al And 26.9% of LBC had a previous experience of being left-behind and were living with both parents during the investigation, while 73.1% of LBC were currently being left-behind
Summary
With rapid development of China’s economy, there were over 68.7 million left-behind children (LBC) in China whose mental health has become a problem of public concern. The present cross-sectional study aimed to investigate the status of mental health and its associated factors of LBC aged 3–16 years old in both rural and urban areas. Parental migration usually means an increasing of family income. A study in Anhui province showed no significant difference on mental health problems between rural preschoolaged LBC with two migrant parents and non-left-behind children (NLBC) [3]. Rural LBC in pre-school were found to have lower level of socialization development than that of rural NLBC and children lived in urban areas [16]. Most existing studies only focused on a single age group, and they failed to cover the whole age range including pre-schooler (under the age of six) and school-aged LBC (aged 7–17)
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