Study On The Relationship Between Parent-child Alienation And Depression In Left-behind Children And Intervention

With the acceleration of urbanization in China,a large number of rural surplus laborers seek better employment opportunities in cities.Although this has improved the family’s economic situation to some extent,it has also made children left behind.Compared with non-left-behind children,previous studies have found that left-behind children have higher risk of depression and more serious depressive symptoms.The main reason is the incompleteness of family system caused by their long separation from their parents,which has affected the normal functioning of family.The long-term separation between parents and children has brought considerable emotional costs to them the most important thing is that their emotional needs for their parents are unsatisfied,which seriously affects the cohesion between parents and children,damages children’s feelings for their parents,and brings the phenomenon of parent-child alienation.Parent-child alienation refers to the emotional alienation of children from their parents,which is mainly caused by the long absence of parents in their daily lives.Previous studies have shown that it will make left-behind children more prone to depressive symptoms,and this effect will also make it difficult for individuals to establish a good attachment relationship with others and have a lower quality of life in adulthood.However,depressive symptoms will not show in all left-behind children who suffer from parent-child alienation.We should pay attention to the mechanism.Young’s schema theory points out that unfavorable childhood experiences are one of the important sources of early maladaptive schemas.And the long-term parent-child separation caused by parents going out to work is considered as the most serious bad experience in the early life of individuals,which increases the risk of depression of left-behind children.Previous studies have discussed the relationship between parent-child alienation and depression in left-behind children,but few people have explored the factors that may play an intermediary role between them.In addition,most of the previous intervention studies on early maladaptive schemas focused on adult groups such as college students,and few on underage groups.Therefore,this study aims to investigate the relationship between parent-child alienation,early maladaptive schemas and depression in left-behind children.In order to alleviate their depression,reduce the activation level of early maladaptive schemas and promote the physical and mental health development of left-behind children,the study intervenes left-behind junior high school students with high scores of early maladaptive schemas through group psychological counseling.The study has two parts.The first one is a questionnaire survey that was conducted among 1727 middle school students in a middle school of Chongqing City.It aims to explore the relationship between parent-child alienation,early maladaptive schemas and depression of left-behind children.The further explore is the mediating role of early maladaptive schemas between parent-child alienation and depression.The second one carried out group psychological counseling activities with the theme of early maladaptive schemas based on the first one,24 left-behind children are its research objects.Among them,12 left-behind children in the experimental group received eight group psychological counseling,while 12 students in the control group did not do any intervention.The effectiveness of group counseling with the theme of early maladaptive schemas in repairing early maladaptive schemas and alleviating depression in left-behind children was explored through data analysis of pre-intervention,post-intervention and follow-up.The following conclusions were drawn from this study:(1)Compared with the non-left-behind children,the level of parent-child alienation,early maladaptive schemas and depression of left-behind children is significantly higher.(2)Parent-child alienation positively predicts early maladaptive schemas and depression,and early maladaptive schemas positively predicts depression,and early maladaptive schemas plays an intermediary role in parent-child alienation and depression.(3)Group psychological counseling with the theme of early maladaptive schemas can effectively reduce the early maladaptive schemas,thus alleviating their depression.It not only achieved good immediate effect,but also maintained the effect to some extent.