A Research On The Mentally Healthy Development Of Children In Families As Ecological Systems

Employing the essential perspectives of ecological system theories, the author's tried to synthesize a large number of domestic studies on mental health of child that fall under the "latent paradigm" of development in ecological systems by meta-analyzing and variables-frequency-analyzing to screen out some most important factors contributing to child development which can be generalized into three groups (i.e. subsystems). After having built a conceived model that might reflect the essence of ecological systems of families of healthy children, the author conducted multivariable tests covering the three subsystems. Through an elaborate analysis of the data available, the effects of each subsystem and each level or factor of every subsystem on mentally healthy development have been investigated, including a study on the features of the interactions between levels or factors within every family subsystems and between the subsystems.The paper first made a general review of the evolution trajectory of the two most important theoretical models: systems and ecological perspectives on development. The systems perspective regards development as the result of changes of systems in which a person live, focusing on the dynamic importance of interrelationships between or among subsystems and between or among levels or factors in every subsystem. By contrast, the ecological perspective holds that the mental health is the function of person and his environment (especially immediate environment), emphasizing the goodness-of-fit of person-environment. Up to today, the two theories have come to collaborate to surge a new wave in the domain of psychology, especially of developmental psychology. The two perspectives have integrated into one that has got the title of ecological systems theory that could bring far-reaching revolution to developmental psychology.Then, using the methods of meta-analysis and variables-frequency-analysis, the author made out three family subsystems including parents subsystem, home environment subsystem and child subsystem, all consisting of screen-out factors of each own. According to the general results from the literatures, a conceived model of family ecological systems came into being.By sampling 746 subjects covering grade 3, 5. 7 and 9, the author screened out 125 (16.8 percent) children as mentally unhealthy. Statistics indicates that there are many significant differences between the healthy group and the unhealthy one, with the more complicated interrelations between or among the levels or factors in each family subsystem and that between or among the subsystems in healthy group, implying that there are more buffering mechanics of adversities in family ecological systems of healthy children.The second selection of variables was done on the basis of statistics in case that the waiting-for-being-confirmed model is not parsimony. The results indicate that the model has a quite well goodness-of-fit with the data. The GFI (i.e. goodness-of-fit index) is .930, the AGF1 (adjusted goodness-of-fit index) .899, proving the conceived model of healthy children is acceptable. The structure model indicates that the three family subsystems of healthy children contribute inversely to behavioral or mental problems. And the significantly positive correlation coefficients among the three subsystems imply that there exists coherence. The intra-subsystem analysis has also been made.According to the author, there should be four prominent features of family ecological systems: (a) equilibrium, (b) dynamic state, (c) openness, and (d) integrity. The four features are inter-depended, embodied by a dynamic structure of family ecological systems. Finally, the feasibility and imperative of setting up an evaluation index system of ecological systems of family of mentally healthy development are discussed, the ecological intervention, protection and promotion programs of mentally healthy development predicted.