ArticleChild and adolescent psychiatry and mental health2021
Impact of parental divorce versus separation due to migration on mental health and self-injury of Chinese children: a cross sectional survey.
Article in Child and adolescent psychiatry and mental health, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 38 citations in OpenAlex.
- Urbanisation and mental health in left-behind children: systematic review and meta-analysis using resilience framework.Pediatric research · 2025Pooled it
- What contributes to alienation towards parents in left-behind children: development of alienation ecological system theoretical framework.BMC public health · 2026Article
- Policies, resources, and interventions for child and adolescent mental health in China: a scoping review.The Lancet regional health. Western Pacific · 2025Review
- Effects of age at first separation from parents on suicidal ideation, suicide planning and suicide attempts among left-behind children: the causal mediating effect of traumatic events.Family medicine and community health · 2025Article
- Non-suicidal self-injury risk among left-behind children and adolescents in China: A systematic review and meta-analysis.World journal of psychiatry · 2025Article
- The impact of parental absence on the mental health of middle school students in rural areas of Western China.Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
- The effect of parental marital status on non-suicidal self-injurious behavior among middle school students in rural western China: a multicenter cross-sectional study based on propensity score matching method.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2025Article
- Article
- Prevalence of Adverse Childhood Experiences and Their Associations with Non-Suicidal Self-Injury Among Chinese Adolescents with Depression.Child psychiatry and human development · 2024Article
- The effects of parent-child separation on the digital literacy of children and adolescents: A bidirectional perspective study.Heliyon · 2024Article
- Understanding the Impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences on Non-suicidal Self-Injury in Youth: A Systematic Review.Alpha psychiatry · 2024Review
- Associations of latent patterns of parent‒child communication with communication quality and mental health outcomes among Chinese left-behind children.BMC public health · 2024Article
- The impact of parental migration patterns, timing, and duration on the health of rural Chinese children.Frontiers in public health · 2024Article
- Non-suicidal self-injury in Chinese population: a scoping review of prevalence, method, risk factors and preventive interventions.The Lancet regional health. Western Pacific · 2023Article
- Key factors selection on adolescents with non-suicidal self-injury: A support vector machine based approach.Frontiers in public health · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundThere has been an increasing prevalence of parental separation in China due to divorce or migration for work in recent decades. However, few studies have compared the impacts of these two types of separation on children's mental health. This study aimed to investigate how parental divorce and parental migration impact children's mental health and self-injurious thoughts and behaviors (SITB), while considering positive factors, including parent-adolescent communication and psychological resilience.
methodsWe randomly recruited participants in grades 5-8 from 18 schools in 2 counties in Anhui Province. A self-administered questionnaire was conducted to measure children's mental health, SITB, parent-adolescent communication, psychological resilience, and socio-demographic characteristics.
resultsData from 1026 children with both parents migrating (BLBC), 1322 children with one parent migrating (SLBC), 475 children living in a divorced family (DC) and 1160 children with non-migrating parents (NLBC) were included. Regression model results showed that, compared to the other three groups (BLBC, SLBC, NLBC), DC exhibited higher internalizing problems (p < 0.05), higher externalizing problems (p < 0.01), less prosocial behaviors (p < 0.05), and higher rates of suicidal ideation (SI) (p < 0.05) and non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) behaviors (p < 0.05) when adjusting for social-demographic variables. However, when further adjusting for parent-adolescent communication and psychological resilience, DC no longer had higher levels of internalizing problems, externalizing problems, NSSI and SI than left-behind groups (BLBC, SLBC).
conclusionsThe experience of separation from divorced parents had stronger negative effects on the mental health of children than was observed in LBC. The Chinese government should design special policy frameworks that provide support to DC.
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