How School-Family-Community Collaboration Shapes Left-Behind Children’s Mental Health: An Ecological Systems Approach in Chongqing, China
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.57125/FS.2026.09.20.08Keywords:
Left-behind children, mental health, ecological systems theory, school-family-community collaboration, Shapley value.Abstract
Amid rapid urbanisation, the number of left-behind children nationwide has reached 66.93 million, and prolonged parent–child separation exposes this group to significant mental health risks. Drawing on ecological systems theory, these risks arise from the functional weakening and collaborative rupture of multiple systems, family, school, and community, yet existing research lacks both mechanistic modeling of the triad as an integrated system and quantitative comparisons of their relative contributions. Using left-behind children in Chongqing as the study population, this research conducted a large-sample survey using the Symptom Checklist-90 (SCL-90) and conductedempirical analyses using multiple regression and Shapley value decomposition. The findings reveal the following: First, family emotional support lies at the core of the protective structure, with guardian care alone explaining 52.27% of the model variance, far exceeding the contributions of school (4.74%) and community (7.92%) factors. Second, the quality of emotional bonds, rather than the form of care is key to psychological well-being: there was no significant difference based on whether care was provided by grandparents, but those with caregivers who showed a high level of concern had significantly better mental health (128.77 vs. 182.22, p<0.001), indicating that “whether one is truly cared for” is far more decisive than “who provides the care.” Third, school-based mental health education and community-based organisational care exert compensatory and synergistic effects, together accounting for approximately 12.7% of the variance. The study suggests a shift from fragmented services toward ecological governance, with efforts focused on enhancing family emotional responsiveness, strengthening the school as the primary front, promoting proactive community care and building a “school–family–community” integrated support ecosystem.
References
Barrera, M. (1986). Distinctions between social support concepts, measures, and models. American Journal of Community Psychology, 14(4), 413–445. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00922627
Bowlby, J. (1969). Attachment and loss: Vol. 1. Attachment. Basic Books.
Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development: Experiments by nature and design. Harvard University Press.
Bronfenbrenner, U., & Morris, P. A. (2006). The bioecological model of human development. In W. Damon & R. M. Lerner (Eds.), Handbook of child psychology (6th ed., Vol. 1, pp. 793–828). Wiley.
Cohen, S., & Wills, T. A. (1985). Stress, social support, and the buffering hypothesis. Psychological Bulletin, 98(2), 310–357. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.98.2.310
Derogatis, L. R. (1994). SCL-90-R: Administration, scoring, and procedures manual (3rd ed.). National Computer Systems.
Derogatis, L. R., & Cleary, P. A. (1977). Confirmation of the dimensional structure of the SCL-90: A study in construct validation. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 33(4), 981–989. https://doi.org/10.1002/1097-4679(197710)33:4<981::AID-JCLP2270330412>3.0.CO;2-0
Durlak, J. A., Weissberg, R. P., Dymnicki, A. B., Taylor, R. D., & Schellinger, K. B. (2011). The impact of enhancing students' social and emotional learning: A meta-analysis of school-based universal interventions. Child Development, 82(1), 405–432. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2010.01564.x
Epstein, J. L. (2011). School, family, and community partnerships: Preparing educators and improving schools (2nd ed.). Westview Press.
Fazel, M., Hoagwood, K., Stephan, S., & Ford, T. (2014). Mental health interventions in schools 1: Mental health interventions in schools in high-income countries. The Lancet Psychiatry, 1(5), 377–387. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2215-0366(14)70312-8
Fellmeth, G., Rose-Clarke, K., Zhao, C., Panter-Brick, C., Hadfield, K., Mitra, R., Busert, L. K., Bhutta, Z. A., Boyle, P., Devakumar, D., Wickramage, K., & Yotebieng, M. (2018). Health impacts of parental migration on left-behind children and adolescents: A systematic review and meta-analysis. The Lancet, 392(10164), 2567–2582. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(18)32558-3
Gilligan, R. (1998). The importance of schools and teachers in child welfare. Child & Family Social Work, 3(1), 13–25. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1365-2206.1998.00069.x
Goodman, R. (1997). The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire: A research note. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 38(5), 581–586. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-7610.1997.tb01545.x
Graham, E., & Jordan, L. P. (2011). Migrant parents and the psychological well-being of left-behind children in Southeast Asia. Journal of Marriage and Family, 73(4), 763–787. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2011.00844.x
Grömping, U. (2007). Estimators of relative importance in linear regression based on variance decomposition. The American Statistician, 61(2), 139–147. https://doi.org/10.1198/000313007X188252
Jorm, A. F. (2012). Mental health literacy: Empowering the community to take action for better mental health. American Psychologist, 67(3), 231–243. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0025957
Leventhal, T., & Brooks-Gunn, J. (2000). The neighborhoods they live in: The effects of neighborhood residence on child and adolescent outcomes. Psychological Bulletin, 126(2), 309–337. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.126.2.309
Lu, S., Lin, Y. T., Vikse, J. H., & Huang, C. C. (2016). Well-being of left-behind children in rural China: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Child: Care, Health and Development, 42(5), 613–625. https://doi.org/10.1111/cch.12363
Luthar, S. S., Cicchetti, D., & Becker, B. (2000). The construct of resilience: A critical evaluation and guidelines for future work. Child Development, 71(3), 543–562. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8624.00164
Masten, A. S. (2001). Ordinary magic: Resilience processes in development. American Psychologist, 56(3), 227–238. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.56.3.227
National Bureau of Statistics of China, UNICEF China, & UNFPA China. (2023). What the 2020 census can tell us about children in China: Facts and figures. UNICEF China.
Sanders, M. G. (2001). The role of "community" in comprehensive school, family, and community partnership programs. The Elementary School Journal, 102(1), 19–34. https://doi.org/10.1086/499691
Su, S., Li, X., Lin, D., Xu, X., & Zhu, M. (2013). Psychological adjustment among left-behind children in rural China: The role of parental migration and parent–child communication. Child: Care, Health and Development, 39(2), 162–170. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2214.2011.01300.x
Tang, W., Wang, G., Hu, T., Dai, Q., Xu, J., Yang, Y., & Xu, J. (2018). Mental health and psychosocial problems among Chinese left-behind children: A cross-sectional comparative study. Journal of Affective Disorders, 241, 578–585. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2018.08.057
Thoits, P. A. (2011). Mechanisms linking social ties and support to physical and mental health. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 52(2), 145–161. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022146510395592
Ungar, M. (2011). The social ecology of resilience: Addressing contextual and cultural ambiguity of a nascent construct. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 81(1), 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1939-0025.2010.01067.x
Wang, L., & Mesman, J. (2015). Child development in the face of rural-to-urban migration in China: A meta-analytic review. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 10(6), 813–831. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691615600145
Weare, K., & Nind, M. (2011). Mental health promotion and problem prevention in schools: What does the evidence say? Health Promotion International, 26(Suppl. 1), i29–i69. https://doi.org/10.1093/heapro/dar075
Wen, M., & Lin, D. (2012). Child development in rural China: Children left-behind by their migrant parents and children of nonmigrant families. Child Development, 83(1), 120–136. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2011.01673.x
Zhao, X., Chen, J., Chen, M. C., Lv, X. L., Jiang, Y. H., & Sun, Y. H. (2014). Left-behind children in rural China experience higher levels of emotional and behavioral difficulties: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Psychological Medicine, 44(15), 3161–3179. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291714000586
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 authors
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.