Review on Mental Health Status of Left-behind Children

Abstract

The term "Left-behind children" refers to children who are left behind in their hometown of migrant workers who remains in their parents’ hometowns (in rural areas) while their parents find work in other parts of the country to support the family. Left-behind children are more likely to have mental health problems than non-left-behind children due to the lack of parental care and education from an early age. With the emergence of left-behind children's social events, more and more scholars begin to focus on the left-behind children's mental health problems, and carry out research from different perspectives. Based on the literature review on mental health status of left-behind children from 1994 to 2019, this paper clarifies the definition of left-behind children, comprehensively analyzes the mental health status from the perspective of anxiety, loneliness, depression, self-esteem, and subjective well-being, studies on the existing intervention measures, and puts forward five problems in the existing research, including deficiency of longitudinal research, neglect of individual differences of left-behind children, lack of appropriate measurement tools, unfeasible intervention measures, and shortage of interdisciplinary research. Finally, the future research is prospected to provide reference for future research.