Maternal Anxiety Symptoms and Chinese Adolescents' Mental Health During the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Protective Role of Adolescents' Self-Compassion

The COVID-19 outbreak triggered dramatic changes to family life. Parents, especially mothers, were found to experience more psychological distress during the pandemic, which may have had an impact on their children's mental health. The primary goal of this study was to examine the potential protective role of adolescents' self-compassion in the relationship between maternal anxiety and adolescents' mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants included 5,720 adolescents (48.9% girls; M age = 11.60, SD age = 1.36) and their mothers from Zhengzhou city, Henan province, in Mainland China. Adolescents reported their level of self-compassion, PTSD symptoms, and negative affect during the COVID-19 pandemic. Mothers reported their own anxiety symptoms and their children's depression and anxiety symptoms. Results indicated that older female adolescents reported higher levels of PTSD symptoms and negative affect and lower levels of self-compassion than their counterparts. Maternal anxiety during the COVID-19 pandemic was consistently positively associated with adolescents' psychological maladjustment. These associations were buffered by adolescents' self-compassion. Specifically, adolescents with higher levels of self-compassion were found to be less psychologically affected by their mothers' anxiety during the COVID-19 pandemic. Findings highlighted the possibility of improving adolescents' mental health through fostering their self-compassion during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Life satisfaction in Chinese rural-to-urban migrants: Investigating the roles of self-esteem and affect balance

The goal of the present article is to investigate whether positive and negative affects mediate or moderate the impact of self-esteem on life satisfaction among Chinese rural-to-urban migrants. Participants contained 712 rural-to-urban migrants recruited from four construction sites in China, who were evaluated with Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, Positive and Negative Affect Scale, and Satisfaction with Life Scale. Correlation analysis indicated self-esteem positively predicted life satisfaction. In addition, we demonstrated the mediating effects of positive affect and negative affect partially in the links from self-esteem to life satisfaction, but failed to reveal the moderating effects. These findings suggested that affect balance intervention program may benefit the life satisfaction in Chinese rural-to-urban migrants.