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School Relational Climate, Social Identity, and Student Well-Being: New Evidence from China on Student Depression and Stress Levels

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Abstract

Individuals’ well-being underpins a strong and sustainable society. Schools are increasingly recognized as key facilitators of well-being producing young people who can flourish across the life span. The current research explores and extends a new model that integrates core aspects of school relational climate (teacher and peer relationships) and school identification (connectedness, belonging) in explaining student negative well-being (depression and stress) in a non-Western cultural context. Measures included students’ perceptions of school relational climate, school identification, stress, and depressive symptoms in 1369 students across six Chinese schools. The results indicated that school relational climate and school identification were significantly associated with Chinese adolescents’ negative well-being in line with predictions based on the social identity perspective; there was also evidence that school identification mediated school-based relationships and negative well-being. The findings provide greater confidence in the variables of school relational climate and school identification in being related to youth well-being and showcase their generalizability and applicability to non-Western cultural settings. The research also provides insights into pathways forward to address mental health in Chinese schools through school relational climate.

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Acknowledgements

Funding was provided by the 12th Five Year Plan of Jiangsu Education (Grant No. B-a/2015/01/001), Jiangsu Social Science Foundation (Grant No. 15SHC006) and Jiangsu Association of Science and Technology.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Australian National University, Canberra, Australia

    Lina Tong & Katherine Reynolds

  2. Charles Darwin University, Darwin, Australia

    Eunro Lee

  3. Tianjin University, Tianjin, China

    Yangyang Liu

  4. Nanjing University, Nanjing, China

    Yangyang Liu

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  1. Lina Tong
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  2. Katherine Reynolds
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  3. Eunro Lee
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  4. Yangyang Liu
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Correspondence to Yangyang Liu.

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All procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation.

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Informed consent was obtained from all participants included in the study.

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Tong, L., Reynolds, K., Lee, E. et al. School Relational Climate, Social Identity, and Student Well-Being: New Evidence from China on Student Depression and Stress Levels. School Mental Health 11, 509–521 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12310-018-9293-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12310-018-9293-0

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