Depression among Chinese Left‐Behind Children: A systematic review and meta‐analysis

Abstract

Background: In China, there are approximately 70 million children, nearly 25% of the child population, who are left behind in the care of other family members when their parents migrate to urban areas, for increased economic opportunities. This paper presents a systematic review and a meta-analysis of studies that have examined the phenomenon of depression among these left-behind children (LBC). Methods: Six hundred three papers published between 2000 and 2017 were retrieved from five databases (China National Knowledge Infrastructure, Wanfang, Weipu, PubMed, and Web of Science).Results: Twenty-one studies (18 in Chinese and 3 in English) met the criteria for inclusion in this meta-analysis. The pooled estimate of depression among LBC was 26.4%. A significant heterogeneity has been found in reported findings, and this heterogeneity was associated with three types of study characteristics, including using an unclear definition of LBC and using invalidated depression instruments, and the geographic location.Conclusions: The risk of mental health problems among this large number of LBC suggests the need to quantify the extent and distribution of their mental health state.Implications for methodological improvements for future research have been discussed.

The Mediating Role of Loneliness Between Social Support and Depressive Symptoms Among Chinese Rural Adolescents During COVID-19 Outbreak: A Comparative Study Between Left-Behind and Non-left-behind Students

“…Specifically, the association between perceived social support and loneliness was stronger for left-behind students in comparison to non-left-behind students. This might be attributed to the absence of parental care among left-behind students, including physical companionship, parental supervision and parental guidance ( 57 ), which might contribute to the strengthened association between perceived social support and loneliness among left-behind adolescents.…”

Network analysis of the relationship between negative life events and depressive symptoms in the left-behind children

“…Although studies have shown that working in the developed area can increase family income and raise family status in the local area, it is rarely beneficial for leftbehind children [2]. Researches show that left-behind children have more mental health problems than nonleft-behind children [3][4][5][6], including a higher risk of depression [7], and anxiety [8], a stronger sense of loneliness [9], and higher suicide risk [10], highlighting severe psychological problems of these children and tough challenges posed by the problems. Depression is the most common mental health problemin childhood [11], and depression in children and adolescents is usually the first episode of depression [12].…”

Psychometric properties and measurement invariance of the emotion regulation questionnaire in Chinese left-behind children

“…Thus, these affected children are forced to live without their parents and receive less parental care and education (Tang et al, 2019;Wu et al, 2019). Studies have shown that parental migration has a negative effect on children's mental health, resulting in low self-esteem, loneliness, anxiety, depression and even a high prevalence of suicidal ideation (Ai & Hu, 2014;Ding et al, 2019;Tang et al, 2018;Xiao et al, 2019). In fact, compared with non-left-behind children (NLBC), LBC are more likely to develop emotional or behavior problems and have significantly more emotional symptoms, more psychopathological behaviors and fewer pro-social behaviors (Fan et al, 2010;Wang et al, 2019).…”