Objective To systematically analyze the factors influencing the left-behind children’s mental health.
Methods After the search term and strategy were confirmed by researchers, four Chinese databases including Chinese Biological Medical Literature Database (CBM), Chinese Science and Technology Periodical Database (VIP), China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) and WanFang Database (WF) were searched to collect papers, published before March 2011, on relevant factors influencing mental health of left-behind children in China. Then two reviewers independently screened, extracted and cross-checked the data, and the disagreements were resolved by discussion or by consulting a third reviewer. Qualitative synthesis method was used to analyze the study results.
Results Of the total 3 252 records, 49 studies were included. The results of qualitative analysis showed that factors influencing left-behind children’s mental health could be classified into four categories including social factors, family factors, school factors and personal factors. Of the nearly 30 kinds of specific factors, the main ones were gender, age, parent-child relationship, social support, personality and characteristics, and outgoing condition of parents, etc.
Conclusion Current research results indicate that many factors have influences on mental health of left-behind children, but the research quality is not high with low argument efficiency. There are still controversies on several factors’ impact. Longitudinal studies with rigorous design are needed to analyze the impact of different factors on the left-behind children’s mental health and to summarize the interaction between various factors, so as to provide scientific evidence for developing practical and effective intervention measures.
Citation： LIU Qin,SUN Minhong,ZHAO Yong,ZHANG Fan,WANG Hong. Factors Related to Left-behind Children’s Mental Health: A Systematic Review. Chinese Journal of Evidence-Based Medicine, 2011, 11(12): 1355-1361. doi: 10.7507/1672-2531.20110228 Copy