The Influence Of Stress On Middle School Students' Mental Health And Academic Development

Middle school stage is a crucial period for individual development,in which mental health and academic performance are two main areas for the development of adolescents,and are important goals of education.Therefore,investigating the influencial factors and the potential of mechanism are very important for students to improve mental health and academic performance.According to Bronfenbrenner‘s Person-Process-Context-Time(PPCT)model,the development of middle school students is affected by individual charactristics and the environmental context in which the interaction takes place over time.In terms of individual characteristics,the transition from the childhood to adulthood wave form occurred during this period.The rapid development of physiology and the relatively slow development of psychology make adolescents facing a number of developmental crises.In terms of environment,from the perspective of macro-system,social vicissitude not only have accelerated the development of economy,but also brought the variability of environment which impacts the psychological development of middle school students and increases the difficulty in adaptation.From the perspective of micro-system,the middle school students are in ?physiological and mental changes time?,with the rise of self-consciousness,the parent-adolescent conflict and parent-teacher conflict increase.In studying,middle school students are faced with heavy school work,further education and employment.The ?change? of environment and the ?change? of middle school students intertwined,which is the underlying reason for the psychological problems of middle school students.The changes of middle school students‘ social,family,academic and interpersonal aspects under the social change have formed the psychological stressors.As one of the most prominent problems of middle school students,stress is an important aspect of affecting their psychological development.The immaturity of development is the internal source of psychological problems,and the basic way to solve the problems is to cultivate the individual‘s psychological suzhi.Regarding the functionary mechanism of psychological suzhi,the previous study mainly explored the direct protective effect of psychological suzhi on mental health in the daily situation,and most of them are cross-sectional studies.However,as a comprehensive and stable indicator to measure child and youth development,the positive function of psychological suzhi is much more than that.Therefore,in order to further expand the research field of psychological suzhi,this study intend to comprehensively investigate the protective effect of psychological suzhi on mental health under chronic and acute stress by means of investigation and experiment separately.The present research consists of three parts and six studies.The first part examined the protective effect of psychological suzhi on mental health and academic development under chronic stress,including study 1 and 2.Study 1,using a cross-sectional design,explored:(1)The correlation between chronic stress,psychological suzhi and mental health,and(2)the protective effect(direct effect and buffer effect)of psychological suzhi on mental health under chronic stress.The sampling design was based on educational statistics released by the Ministry of Education in the People‘s Republic of China.Data for 1,940 middle school students were analyzed.Study 2 examined:(1)The relationship between chronic stress,psychological suzhi,and academic performance,and(2)the protective effect of psychological suzhi on academic performance under chronic stress.Correlation analysis,linear regression analysis and latent moderated structural equations(LMS)were applied.The second part further explored the causal relationship between chronic stress and mental health and academic development of middle school students,and whether psychological suzhi has a long-term protective effect on mental health and academic development of middle school students in the context of chronic stress,including study 3 and 4.Based on study 1,study 3,using a prospective longitudinal design,examined the long-term protective effect of psychological suzhi on mental health under chronic stress conditions.The sample included 608 students from three middle schools from Guizhou province.The time interval between the two surveys is 18 months.LMS and Linear regression analysis were applied to investigate that if psychological suzhi buffer the association between chronic stress and general mental health,the indicators of mental health,separately.Based on study 2,study 4 explored the protective effect of psychological suzhi in the long-term effect of chronic stress on academic achievement.The third part explored the protective effect of psychological suzhi on mental health and academic development of middle school students under acute stress situation,including study 5 and 6.Study 5 used experimental methods to explore the protective effect of psychological suzhi on mental health in acute stress situations.According to the national norm of middle school students‘ psychological suzhi,63 subjects of high and low psychological suzhi groups were selected.The experimental situation was divided into stress situation and control situation.The revised Trier Social Stress Test for Groups(TSST-G)was used to induce acute stress response.Psychological indicators(self-reported stress,state anxiety)and physiological indicators(heart rate(HR)and salivary cortisol)were measured during the experiment.Using a repeated measures ANOVA to analyze the data.Study 6 explored the impact of acute stress on academic development and the protective effect of psychological suzhi.According to the national norm of middle school students‘ psychological suzhi,142 subjects of high and low psychological suzhi groups were selected.The experimental situations included both stress and control situations.Working memory was closely related to learning ability and academic development.Therefore,working memory was regarded as the process indicator of academic development in experimental situations.The N-back paradigm was used for the evaluation of working memory.Data was analyzed by repeated measurement ANOVA.The main conclusions are as follows:(1)In the cross-sectional study,for the positive indicators of mental health,including positive affect and life satisfaction,the direct effect of chronic stress on life satisfaction was significant.Moreover,psychological suzhi moderated the relationship between chronic stress and life satisfaction by serving as a stress-vulnerability factor.That is,with the increase of chronic stress,the protective effect of psychological suzhi was limited.However,the direct effect of chronic stress on positive affect was not significant,and the interaction effect between chronic stress and psychological suzhi was not significant.In terms of negative indicators of mental health,including depression,anxiety,and negative affect,the main effects of chronic stress and X psychological suzhi were both significant.Moreover,the interaction effect between chronic stress and psychological suzhi was also significant.Further,psychological suzhi moderated the relationship between chronic stress and negative mental health by serving as a stress-buffering factor.In general,chronic stress had a significant negative impact on the general mental health,and psychological suzhi weaken the adverse effect of chronic stress on the general mental health.(2)In the cross-sectional study,chronic stress had no direct effect on academic achievement.But psychological suzhi impacted positively on academic achievement.Moreover,the relationship between chronic stress and academic achievement was moderated by psychological suzhi serving as a stress-vulnerability factor.(3)In the longitudinal study,under the chronic stress situation,there were differences in the protective model and length of psychological suzhi for different indicators of mental health.For positive indicators of mental health,chronic stress negatively predicted middle school students‘ life satisfaction after 18 months,but psychological suzhi not significantly moderated the relationship between chronic stress and life satisfaction after 18 months.For the other positive indicator,the longitudinal predictive effect of chronic stress on positive affect was not significant,and the moderating effect of psychological suzhi in the longitudinal relationship was not significant.For the negative indicators of mental health,chronic stress predicted the negative indicators of mental health(depression,state anxiety,negative affect)after 18 months,and the moderating effects of psychological suzhi in the longitudinal relationship were also significant.Psychological suzhi served as a stress-buffering factor,i.e.psychological suzhi decreased the long-term negative effects of chronic stress on negative indicators of mental health.In general,chronic stress predicted the general mental health of middle school students after 18 months,but psychological suzhi not moderated the impact of chronic stress on the general mental health after 18 months.That is,with the long-term accumulation of stress events,psychological suzhi was relatively limited to protect mental health.(4)There was no significant effect of chronic stress on academic achievement 18-month later,whereas psychological suzhi not only had an impact on academic achievement after 18 months,but also moderated the long-term impact of chronic stress on academic achievement by serving as a stress-vulnerability factor,which was consistent with the results of study 2.(5)In the experimental study,the revised TSST-G could effectively induce the acute stress.Acute stress had a significant impact on state anxiety,and psychological suzhi could moderate the negative effect of acute stress on state anxiety by serving as a stress-buffering factor.In addition,acute stress can induce physiological stress response(heart rate,salivary cortisol),and psychological suzhi could decrease individual‘s physiological response under acute stress.(6)In the experimental study,the percentage of correct responses of N-back in the control situation was significantly higher than that in the stress situation,and the reaction times of the correct responses was shorter,that is,acute stress impaired the working memory of middle school students.In terms of the percentage of correct responses,both the main and moderating effects of psychological suzhi were significant,and the moderating effect of psychological suzhi on acute stress was related to the difficulty of current cognitive tasks.When task difficulty was medium(2-back),the buffering effect was especially significant.However,in terms of the reaction times of the correct responses,the buffering effect of psychological suzhi was not significant.In summary,whether chronic stress or acute stress,would have negative impacts on the development of middle school students,and psychological suzhi had a protective effect on the development of middle school students under stress.The study further explored the internal protective mechanism of psychological suzhi on different indicators of development under stress,and revealed that there were differences in the protective model and length of psychological suzhi on the development of middle school students.This study provided empirical support for the model of the relationship between psychological suzhi and mental health and the model of relationship between psychological suzhi and students‘ development under stress,and also expands the scope of these theoretical models.It showed that psychological suzhi was an endogenous factor of individual development,and the sound psychological suzhi was an important factor to determine the individual‘s internal ability to resist stress,and was critical to maintain and promote individual‘s development.The main innovations of this study are as follows.First,the study constructed a theoretical model of the relationship between psychological suzhi and students‘ development under stress,and tested the protective effect of psychological suzhi on students‘ mental health and academic development with empirical research.Second,the study revealed the difference of the protective models of psychological suzhi on different indicators of development under stress situations.Specifically,the protective effects of psychological suzhi on the positive indicators of mental health and academic development are relatively limited,reflecting the development function,while the protective effects of psychological suzhi on negative indicators of mental health and general mental health embodies the defensive function of psychological suzhi.Third,the study revealed that psychological suzhi has different protective length on different indicators of development in stress situations.For positive indicators of mental health and general mental health,the buffer time of psychological suzhi on stress is relatively short,while for negative indicators of mental health and academic development,the buffer effect of psychological suzhi on stress has long-term effectiveness.Last but not least,psychological suzhi buffers psychological and physiological stress responses of middle school students.