Social Support And Mental Health Status Of Rural Left-behind Women And Their Associated Research

Since the early1980’s, with the deepening of reform and opening up in China, as well asthe acceleration of urban, a large number of rural labor flow to urban and become the city’smigrant workers, but because of their limited economic conditions and other aspects of thesystem, these migrant worker’s parents, wife and children were left in the countryside, hasbecome the left-behind elderly, left-behind women and left-behind children. After herhusband’s out, what should be the couple shared responsibility for all the family moved to theleft-behind women who bear alone the agricultural production, children’s education, supportfor the elderly, such as multiple responsibilities; them become the mainstay of the family leftbehind. However, the long years of arduous labor, heavy negative tends to make left-behindwomen overwhelmed; their physical and mental health is worrying. The rural left-behindwomen as the strong backing of her husband, is the backbone of the left-behind family, is themain force of the new rural construction, contribute to the development of society with theirstrength; however this particular group deserves attention of society, but often overlooked.Compared with left-behind children, the left-behind elderly, the left-behind women gained theleast attention, therefore, to strengthen research on the mental health of this population,understand the present situation of social support, as they established a strong and extensivesocial support network, support their bravery in the face of difficulties and problems in lifeand maintain a healthy attitude to keep their physical and mental health, which for solving theproblem of rural left-behind women and promote the healthy development of rural socialharmony and building society new socialist countryside is of great significance.In this study, left-behind women for the study come from two administrative villages ofLuzhou City in Sichuan province, through questionnaires, interviews and case measuringscale on the mental health of rural left-behind women, social support current characteristicsand social support for rural women left behind affect their mental health were explored. Theresults showed that:Rural women left behind overall has low social support, social support scores; subjectivesupport, objective support and support utilization scores were lower than the national norm;Different ages, the intensity of labor, fixed number of year of the husband go out to work, andfamily income of left-behind women their differences in the social support. Mental health of rural women left behind were significantly below the national average ofadults, there are different degrees of problems on nine factors of mental health symptoms,somatization abnormal rate is the highest, followed by symptoms of terror, followed by thepsychotic, depression, paranoia, obsessive-compulsive, hostility and other symptoms,interpersonal sensitivity, anxiety and other symptoms.Rural left-behind woman’s age, work time, fixed number of year of the husband go out towork, such as household income will affect the left-behind woman’s mental health.Mental health status of rural women left behind due to different levels of social support andsignificant differences appear. High level of social support rural left-behind women, theirpsychological healthy condition is good; low level of social support rural left-behind women,their poor mental health.The overall level of social support, subjective support, exploitation degree of social supportsignificantly associated with the rural left-behind woman’s psychological health, subjectivesupport the biggest influence on rural left-behind woman’s psychological health development.