The Moderating Effect Of Peer Relatio Nship Between Self-differentiation And Mental Health In Middle School Left-be Hind Children

For left-behind children, mental health is the very foundation to their healthy gro wth.Self-differentiation is the degree to which an individual is able to distinguish hims elf from his original family in the level of thinking and feeling and it's an important predictor of individual mental health.Peers can provide the most social support in adol escents' daily life and good peer relationship plays an important role in maintaining in dividual mental health.This research investigated 255 left-behind children from two middle schools in an impoverished country of Baoding city with<Differentiation of self inventory>,<Adolesc ents' peer relationship scale >and<Middle school student mental health scale>.It probed into the relationship among self-differentiation,peer relationship and mental heath thro ugh the t test,variance analysis,correlation and regression analysis. The results are as f ollows:(1)Compared with un-left-behind children in middle school,the left-behind children have a low level of overall mental health and more maladjustment;what's more,there is a significant difference in the aspect of emotional fluctuation between these two gro ups.(2)The attitude of the left-behind children in middle school has an conspicuous in fluence on their mental health.The passive attitude of left-behind children has quite a negative effect on their mental health.There is a gender difference in the mental health of left-behind children in middle school,which is the boys have a poor mental health level than the girls.The mental health level of left-behind children in middle school h as deteriorated with the increasing of grade and the left-behind children in eighth grad e have the best level of peer relationship.(3)There is a positive correlation between self-differentiation and peer acceptance,t here are negative correlations between self-differentiation and peer fear,self-differentiatio n and mental health.There are negative correlations between peer acceptance and peer fear, peer acceptance and mental health. There is a positive correlation between peer f ear and mental health.(4)The peer acceptance and peer fear moderate the relationship between self-differ entiation and mental health separately, which is for the left-behind children in middle school who have low peer acceptance group or high peer fear, self-differentiation play s a stronger predictive effect on mental health.