No abstract

Chinese adolescents, Life satisfaction, Self-rated health, Odd ratio,

Suicide as a cause of death among adolescents and migration as a component of population have been growing in importance. Very little research has been conducted on the connections between migration and suicidality among adolescents in Hong Kong, and so is the aim of this article. It uses census and registration data to study suicide mortality, and sample survey data collected for this purpose to investigate suicide attempt, suicide ideation, and self-injurious behavior. Relations between suicidality and socio-demographic/psychological factors replicated those found in the literature. Duration of residence was found important for the study of suicide among migrants. In both the bivariate and multivariate analyses, although the suicidality levels for short-duration (less than 10 years) adolescent migrants were very much lower than the local-born counterparts, those for the long-duration (10 years or more) migrants were very much higher. The findings support the Healthy Migrant Hypothesis and other related hypotheses in migrant mortality studies. They also reveal, in the light of the Integration Theory of Suicide, the problem of migrant integration into the host culture and society, an important social problem for the government to solve.

Chinese adolescents, Life satisfaction, Family structure, Risk ratio,

In China, with one-child family being the predominant form, the psychosocial study of only child is particularly important. In a random sample of 4502 Chinese adolescents in Hong Kong, controlling the underlying socio-demographic variables like gender, age, level of study, economic well-being, family structure, and migrant status, we found very distinctive differences in psycho-behavioural characteristics between only children and children with siblings. In compliance to previous research, relative to their counterparts with siblings, the only children had similar level of mental health and high satisfaction in academic performance. In many areas not covered in the literature, the only children outperformed. They had health advantages in three areas, overall health, physical health, and activity limitation. In life satisfaction, they also had higher levels in overall life and most specific life domains. They had less participation in violent behaviour like fighting, self-injury, and suicide, and higher involvement in making donation to benevolent organizations.