Vulnerable Groups Of Women In Shanghai City Subjective Sense Of Happiness And Its Impact Factors

This study investigated the subject well-being(SWB) of some vulnerable women group in Shanghai from three dimensions: positive affect, negative affect and life satisfaction by undertaking a questionnaire to 928 vulnerable women in three districts of Shanghai. Combining with coping strategies and personality traits and some objective factors, we examined how these factors had influenced their SWB. The results show: 1) the SWB of the vulnerable women group in Shanghai is at a relatively low level in whole, and the attention should be attached to their mental health; and 2) there exists a significantly negative relationship between the neuroticism (EPQ-N) and SWB, whereas the extroversion (EPQ-E) and self-esteem are positively related to SWB. Meanwhile, different personality traits have different effect on distinguished aspects of SWB. Among the objective factors, family income and self-reported health make the most powerful predictors of the affect state and life satisfaction. As for the other factors, such as marriage quality, medical expenditure, social support, negative life events, worry about children, employment, marriage state and occupation, each makes some significant contribution to distinguished aspects of SWB in different degree; and 3) the vulnerable women group in Shanghai demonstrates the following characteristics in coping: though having paid active efforts to cope, they lack effective methods and necessary resources, resulting in poor coping effect and some of them show certain helplessness reaction when faced with stress; and 4) except for the active problem-focused coping and positive reappraisal which don't lead to the supposed positive effect, all the other coping strategies significantly influence their SWB: helplessness reaction, escape and avoidance and self-inhibition decrease their SWB, while seeking social support provide them with more social supports which increase their SWB; 5) the negative and positive effects of personality and some objective factors come into effect partly by increasing or decreasing their coping strategies.Based on the above results, this study provides some suggestions: a) coping intervention should be a breakthrough to improve the mental health of vulnerable women; and b) efforts in community mental health should be more attached to primary prevention and focused on individual with the precondition that the training of the community workers be developed.