| The concept of resilience is developed based on researches of coping stresses. Befor the 1950s, the relationship of exposing to stresses and adversity to mental illness in children has been noticed by many researchers. And all studies about disadvantaged children considered that adversity has an absolutly and generally negative impact on childern's development. But after 1960s it was found that some children who exposed in high risk situations were seemed to have no affected by those hameful experiences and got the same outcomes as those normal children. The further study suggested that the competence of children's coping stresses is relative rather than absolute, and it comes from the characteristic of individual, environment and interaction of the both side. Consequently, people began to turn their attention from individual to an ecosystem such as family or community, gradually making their research design or system analysis on the lay of multilevel, dynamic and interaction. The relationship of children and environment, as well as their interaction became the focus of study.Children live in long term poverty are often exposed in innutrition, lacking of educational opportunities, illness and various life events which produced of poverty, and they construct the threaten to both physical and psychological development of children. Nevertheless, being the existence, of resilient protective factors including individual traits and external environment, many children living poverty don't produce severe mental problems and develop well. The purpose of the present study is to explore how the risk factors such as life events and the resilient protect factors interact and exert influence on mental health in children living in poverty.The present study takes Spring Bud girls as girls living in poverty, examining the following hypothesis by comparing Spring Bud girls and common students near by Shaanxi province Xian city, on the scores of Resilience Scale, Adolescent Self-Rating Life Events Check List (ASLEC) and Symptom checklist 90 (SCL-90):Hypothesis 1: Family poverty, parents' relational problems, community poverty and life events have the negative impact on mental wellbeing of children living in poverty.Hypothesis 2: Resilience which consists of external protective factors and individual traits can protect mental health of children living in poverty.Hypothesis 3: Children who live in poverty expose to more risk factors than those who don't live in poverty. Hypothesis 4: Resilience can enhance the mental health of children living in poverty by buffering the negative effect of life events on mental health.The present study achieves the following result by analysis of correlation, motive liner regression and structure equation.1. Poverty girls have better peer relationship, less stressful life events and higher mental health level than other children.2. Life events have negative influence on children's mental health while resilient protective factors can improve children's mental health.3. Resilience improves mental health by reducing the effects of stress life events on mental health.We propose suggests according to our results: At first, since peer relationship, individual traits and family factors are protective factors of mental health of children who live in poverty, interventional approaches addressing improving mental health of children living in poverty can set about from these three respects. And second, the teacher factor doesn't enter the final model (ie. It doesn't exert its protective function to children's mental health.), which suggests from another side that teachers resource need to be reinforced. Finally, as children in these areas generally live in the state of poverty and it's relatively limited to just help a few individuals. So we'd better take it in integrity to improve the whole environment for children. |
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