Psychological abuse often has a negative and long-lasting impact across different domains in life, which might also affect the next generation. However, few studies have explored the psychophysiological pathways through which parental history of psychological abuse is associated with their adolescents' internalizing and externalizing problems. Therefore, the current study examines the relationships between parental history of psychological abuse and adolescent internalizing and externalizing problems, as well as the mediating roles of parental psychological abuse and adolescent cortisol response to stress among 143 Chinese adolescents and their parents. Results indicated that parental history of psychological abuse was positively associated with both adolescent internalizing and externalizing problems, with these associations consistently mediated by parental psychological abuse. Additionally, chain mediation involving parental psychological abuse and decreased cortisol response to stress was selective, depending on the cortisol indices and outcome domains. Our study lends support for the intergenerational association between parental history of psychological abuse and adolescent psychopathology. Reducing parental psychological abuse may help inform future efforts to prevent intergenerational risk pathways, either directly or indirectly.

The transition to college triggers significant stress that adversely affects student outcomes. Perceived stress during this period critically influences psychological well-being and physical health. However, longitudinal stress trajectories and their underlying protective factors remain poorly understood. A four-wave longitudinal design tracked 2326 Chinese first-year college students (Mage= 18.16, SD = 0.57; 55.6

This study found that school bullying victimization was associated with increased risk for negative mental health outcomes among adolescents. Bullying has many forms, including physical, verbal, social, cyber, property-related, and sexual; however, little prior research has examined impacts of exposure to various bullying types among Chinese adolescents. This study explored associations between six types of bullying and mental health outcomes (i.e. depression and anxiety) through a cross-sectional survey of 397 adolescents enrolled in 8th grade in a middle school in Beijing, China. Youth reported on their bullying victimization experiences and mental health. Findings showed significant main effects of verbal, social, property-related, and sexual bullying on symptoms of depression and anxiety, whereas physical and cyberbullying predicted only depressive symptoms. Social bullying had the strongest association among all types with depression and anxiety. In addition, female adolescents who experienced physical and sexual bullying were more likely to report depressive symptoms than their male counterparts. Findings underscore negative effects of bullying on students' mental health, as well as the importance of screening all students to identify exposure to various types of bullying.

OBJECTIVE:Somatic symptoms (SS) pose public health burdens, but it remains unclear whether SS should be defined by overall severity or specific symptoms. Therefore, we aimed to identify SS profiles and explore how psychosocial predictors shape these profiles based on the biopsychosocial model. METHODS AND MEASURES:From October to December 2020, Chinese college students (n = 598) completed three waves of survey on SS and psychosocial predictors. We used cluster analysis to identify SS profiles, classification and regression tree (CART) to examine psychosocial predictors, and the area under the receiver operator curve (AUC) to assess CART's predictive performance. RESULTS:Three profiles were identified: high severity and featured gastrointestinal symptoms (high, 23.6%), moderate severity and featured tiredness (moderate, 32.9%), and low in all symptoms (low, 43.5%). These profiles differed in rumination, anxiety symptoms, perceived stress, and peer attachment. Specifically, more rumination and higher anxiety symptoms predicted the membership of the high group. The CART models effectively distinguished the high group (AUC ≥ 0.84) and moderate group (AUC ≥ 0.70) from the low group. CONCLUSION:The three symptom patterns enhance our understanding of similarities and differences in SS profiles. Key predictors will inform targeted prevention and intervention for those at higher risk.

Using a statistical-learning approach, the present study examined whether unpredictability in abuse and neglect differentially predicted adolescents’ diurnal cortisol rhythms and depressive symptoms, and whether a positive school climate moderated these associations. A total of 211 adolescents (T1: Mage = 10.82 years, SD = 0.85; 34.6% girls) participated in a four-wave longitudinal survey spanning two years. Unpredictability was operationalized as random variation across the same repeated measurements. Results indicated that unpredictability in abuse significantly predicted flatter diurnal cortisol slopes but not depressive symptoms. Abuse unpredictability also interacted with average abuse exposure: higher unpredictability was linked to fewer depressive symptoms when average exposure was high. Neglect unpredictability showed no significant associations with either cortisol rhythms or depressive symptoms. School safety and order moderated the link between abuse unpredictability and diurnal cortisol slopes, with significant effects emerging only under low school safety and order. Similarly, school support and acceptance moderated the association between neglect unpredictability and diurnal cortisol slopes. Findings suggest that abuse unpredictability has stronger implications for adolescent health than neglect unpredictability, and that a positive school climate may serve as a protective factor for adolescents experiencing adverse family contexts.

This study sought to examine whether diurnal cortisol served as an intermediary pathway linking childhood adversity and daily hassles to adolescent sleep behaviors (i.e., duration and quality). Data were drawn from 255 Chinese adolescents (32.2% female; Mage = 11.678 years, SD = 0.741, range = 10-14 years). Adolescents filled out a survey on demographics and childhood adversity at T1. One year later (T2), they completed 7-day reports on daily hassles and sleep behaviors and provided saliva samples for 3 consecutive days. Six months later (T3), adolescents completed a follow-up survey on their sleep behaviors. Multilevel structural equation models were conducted to examine the mediating effects of diurnal cortisol on associations between stressors and sleep duration and quality. Specific associations emerged between stressors and adolescent diurnal cortisol: Adolescents who reported greater childhood adversity at T1 exhibited a smaller cortisol awakening response (CAR) at T2; by contrast, on days when adolescents perceived more daily hassles, they exhibited a larger CAR the next day. For links between diurnal cortisol and sleep behaviors, distinct associations were observed for daily (within-person) versus longer term (between-person) effects. Finally, waking cortisol and CAR mediated the links between prior-day daily hassles and next-day sleep duration; the indirect effects of diurnal cortisol were not supported for the links between childhood adversity and sleep behaviors. Observing the temporal, time-lagged mechanism of diurnal cortisol explaining the links between daily stressors and sleep behaviors, this study points to important implications for practices on promoting adolescent sleep health. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

BACKGROUND:Puberty is a critical developmental stage involving profound remodeling of neuroendocrine and neuromodulatory systems. While hormonal changes from a single system have been well studied, the systemic coordination across multiple systems and its sex-specific pattern remain unclear. METHODS:We recruited 449 healthy adolescents (226 males, 223 females) and constructed the network that encompasses nine hormones representative of the HPA and HPG axes, ECS, and melatonin system. The hormones were measured from hair with LC-MS/MS. Hormonal networks were estimated via Spearman correlations. Expected influence (EI), bridge expected influence (bridge EI), and global strength were calculated. Sex differences were examined in global strength, edge weight, EI and bridge EI using the Network Comparison Test. RESULTS:The pubertal network showed the strongest coupling between metabolically related hormone pairs (i.e., F - E, MEL - NAS and T - P) and antagonistic pairs with cross-system associations (i.e., DHEA - NAS and DHEA - AEA). Cortisol, testosterone and melatonin with the highest EI were identified as hubs where testosterone emerged as a puberty-specific central node, but 1-AG exerted negative influence as an inhibitor. The pubertal network exhibited high global strength. Males showed significantly stronger global strength than females, but weaker edgeweight at the F - DHEA, E - NAS and T - NAS edges. Significant sex differences also appeared in both EI and bridge EI at nodes NAS and 1-AG. CONCLUSIONS:Puberty is marked by intensified neuroendocrine integration and sex-specific reorganization. Cortisol and melatonin consistently act as central hubs, testosterone and progesterone show sex-differentiated roles, and 1-AG emerges as a potential inhibitory hormone. These findings highlight systemic bases of pubertal sexual differentiation and demonstrate the value of network analysis for mapping complex hormonal interactions.

Childhood adversity impairs well-being, yet psychological resilience may buffer its impact. Using resting-state fMRI in 94 rural Chinese children (ages 10-14), we examined whether psychological resilience protects brain network connectivity from adversity and its relevance to psychological well-being. Psychological resilience significantly moderated the impact of abuse, but not neglect, on limbic connectivity. Low-resilience children exposed to abuse showed heightened limbic-somatomotor and limbic-ventral attention connectivity, which predicted greater somatization and depression at baseline and more severe levels of anxiety six months later. These associations were absent in high-resilience children. Our findings reveal that psychological resilience specifically shields against the neurotoxic effects of abuse by modulating networks involved in emotion regulation, salience, and sensorimotor processing. Targeted interventions should consider adversity dimensions and psychological resilience capacity to mitigate long-term mental health risks.

Sleep constitutes a fundamental pillar of pediatric development. However, sleep deprivation has emerged as a "silent epidemic" among children and adolescents all over the world. This study investigates the associations between adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and sleep deprivation, moving beyond traditional cumulative risk models to disentangle the heterogeneity of trauma patterns and their intersectional stratification. Utilizing pooled data from the National Survey of Children's Health (2020-2022) with a nationally representative sample of school-aged children and adolescents (N = 94,257), we employed Latent Class Analysis (LCA) to identify distinct ACE typologies and Multilevel Analysis of Individual Heterogeneity and Discriminatory Accuracy (MAIHDA) to quantify sleep disparities across 138 intersectional strata defined by ACE patterns, race, gender, and developmental timing. LCA identified four distinct classes: Low Adversity, Family Disruption, Peer Victimization & Discrimination, and Pervasive Adversity. While all high-risk classes predicted elevated sleep deprivation, MAIHDA revealed profound structural stratification, with race/ethnicity emerging as the largest single contributor to between-strata variance, independently explaining 31.32% of the between-strata variance. We found significant "excess intersectional heterogeneity" indicating non-additive effects, most notably a "Double Jeopardy" effect for Black male adolescents in the Pervasive Adversity, whose predicted probability of sleep deprivation approached 80%, compared to less than 20% in low-risk groups. These findings underscore that sleep disparities are not merely byproducts of individual trauma but are systematically patterned by racialized and gendered structures, suggesting that addressing the pediatric sleep epidemic requires moving beyond aggregate risk scores toward targeted interventions that address the specific "intersectional locations" of vulnerable children.

Despite growing recognition that positive youth development (PYD) depends on the dynamic interaction of individual and ecological resources, existing studies rely on linear models that cannot capture high-dimensional, nonlinear predictor configurations. This study applied machine learning to four-wave longitudinal data from 5019 Chinese adolescents (ages 9-19) to identify the key predictors of PYD at T4 (controlling for prior PYD at T3), measured by the Chinese 4Cs model (Character, Competence, Confidence, Connection). We compared 12 algorithms; CatBoost achieved the best prediction ( R 2  = .816). SHAP analysis identified school psychological climate, depression, and parental loneliness as the top three predictors. Heterogeneity analyses revealed an age gradient: School climate dominated for primary and middle school students, whereas parental loneliness dominated for high school students. Student type analyses uncovered three distinct developmental pathways: an aspirational pathway characterized by social mobility belief for migrant children, a relational pathway characterized by parental loneliness for left-behind and urban children, and a clinical pathway characterized by depression for rural ordinary children. These findings provide empirical support for differentiated, context-sensitive intervention strategies targeting PYD across diverse Chinese adolescent populations.

Purpose Examining circadian hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis activity during adolescence is vital for understanding physiological changes. Limited research explores risk and protective factors for diurnal HPA activity. This study investigates how adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and coping are associated with changes in diurnal cortisol patterns, using a combination of physiological biomarkers (i.e., salivary cortisol), daily diaries, and longitudinal assessments spanning two years. Methods The sample included 316 Chinese adolescents (33% females; T1 Mage = 10.79 years, SD = 0.84). At T1, adolescents reported ACEs, completed 7-day diaries on coping, and provided saliva samples for three consecutive days. Two years later (T2), adolescents completed a follow-up assessment on diurnal cortisol activity. Latent change score modeling was conducted to investigate changing patterns in diurnal cortisol and associations of ACEs and coping with the changing patterns. Results From T1 to T2, waking cortisol decreased, CAR increased, and diurnal cortisol slopes became steeper. ACEs were associated with initial levels of diurnal cortisol activity but not changes in it: more ACEs were linked to higher T1 waking cortisol and a smaller T1 CAR. Higher ACEs were also associated with later wake-up times; later wake-up was associated with lower T1 CAR, more blunted T1 diurnal slopes, and flatter diurnal slopes across time. Daily coping (mean and variability) moderated the associations between ACEs and diurnal cortisol. Conclusion By observing coping as a moderator between ACEs and cortisol patterns, this study demonstrates that associations between ACEs and diurnal cortisol differ across adolescents’ coping use and coping variability.

The transition to college is a critical period for first-generation college students (FGCS), during which their perceived stress significantly influences developmental outcomes, including psychological well-being and physical health. However, this longitudinal study was conducted across four waves (October 2023, March 2024, October 2024, March 2025) to investigate these patterns in a sample of Chinese university students ( M age = 18.16, SD = 0.87; 52.5% male; 66.55% FGCS). We identified three distinct stress trajectories using latent class growth analysis: a low-rapidly declining-rebounding trajectory (10.23%), a moderate-gradual declining-stabilizing trajectory (29.58%), and a high-stable trajectory (60.19%). Students in the low-rebounding trajectory reported the most favorable outcomes (lowest anxiety and depression, highest life satisfaction and physical health), whereas those in the high-stable trajectory reported the poorest outcomes. Beyond the significant main effects of psychological resilience and social support, a significant interaction was observed. Specifically, FGCS with concurrently high levels of both resilience and social support were more likely to belong to the low-rebounding trajectory than the high-stable class. These findings underscore the dynamic nature of perceived stress and the synergistic role of protective factors in fostering positive adaptation among FGCS, offering valuable insights for developing individualized interventions.

Cerebral asymmetry is a core principle of human brain organization, showing dynamic changes across the lifespan and alterations in brain disorders. However, it remains unclear whether lifespan trajectories of asymmetry differ across populations. We compared lifespan structural asymmetry normative charts of 221 cerebral imaging phenotypes from 43,037 Chinese and 56,339 Western participants aged 0–100 years. The two populations showed distinct lifespan asymmetry patterns in 26.2% of the phenotypes. Chinese-minus-Western asymmetry difference curves displayed distinct patterns across brain phenotypes: rightward (45.7%), leftward (26.2%), rightward-to-leftward (11.8%), leftward-to-rightward (10.0%), and unclassified (6.3%). Population-matched normative models outperformed population-unmatched normative models in capturing normal asymmetry variability among healthy individuals and in detecting abnormal asymmetry deviations in patients with Alzheimer’s disease, mild cognitive impairment, schizophrenia, and major depressive disorder. These findings indicate that population mismatch can bias chart-based individual-level asymmetry assessment and underscore the need for population-representative brain asymmetry normative charts.

Although global research on the 5Cs model of Positive Youth Development (PYD; competence, confidence, connection, character, and caring) has expanded in recent years, there is a lack of understanding about distinct and consistent PYD profiles across youth from diverse socio-cultural contexts. To address this gap, this study utilized a person-oriented analytic approach to examine the PYD profiles of 11,481 emerging adults (Mage = 21.77; SDage = 2.74; 68.66

Self-harm has proven social contagion effects among young people. However, a comprehensive understanding of the complex dynamics that contribute to self-harm contagion in adolescents is lacking. In this Review, we synthesize evidence regarding the social contagion of self-harm in young people using a social ecological approach. At the individual level, psychological and neurobiological vulnerabilities increase young people’s susceptibility to social contagion. At the interpersonal level, social contagion of self-harm occurs through peer interactions and social media connections, as well as through family ties including parental, sibling and grandparental relationships. At the community level, social contagion is evident in high-risk clusters of young people in institutional settings (schools, universities, psychiatric hospitals and justice-involved youth institutes), on social media and in digital spaces, and in neighbourhoods, where socioeconomic disadvantage is a key structural constraint that amplifies self-harm contagion. At the societal level, media-regulation challenges, global pandemics and political context exacerbate the social contagion of self-harm by intensifying pre-existing risk factors across individual, interpersonal and community levels. We address these multilevel factors to bridge psychological and public health perspectives of social contagion dynamics and describe prevention and intervention efforts that might offer scalable, evidence-based solutions for mitigating self-harm among youth. Adolescents are particularly at risk for social contagion effects of self-harm. In this Review, Chen et al. specify factors that exacerbate self-harm social contagion at the individual, interpersonal, community and societal levels and discuss how to bridge psychological and public health perspectives to mitigate self-harm risk in this age group.

Much of the research on mindsets has focused on implicit theories of intelligence. However, there are other types of mindsets that might have important implications for learning and achievement. Among those that have received less attention is mindset of socioeconomic status (SES), which pertains to the belief that SES is changeable (i.e., growth mindset of SES) or not (i.e., fixed mindset of SES). We conducted three studies to investigate the role of a growth (vs. fixed) mindset of SES in Chinese college students’ academic-related outcomes. Study 1 (a cross-sectional study, n = 342) and Study 2 (a longitudinal study, n = 299) examined whether mindset of SES is associated with academic achievement and whether school engagement explains the association between mindset of SES and academic achievement. The results consistently showed that students with a growth mindset of SES had higher school engagement, which, in turn, was related to higher academic achievement. Study 3 adopted an experimental approach to investigate the causal effect of mindset of SES on school engagement and educational aspiration (n = 174). The results indicated that experimentally inducing a growth mindset of SES increased students’ perceived school engagement, which was linked to better educational aspirations. Together, these three studies highlight the role of growth mindset of SES in shaping academic-related outcomes among college students.

Alterations in hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis function may underlie the relation between childhood maltreatment and nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) behaviors. This study examined how co-occurring patterns of maltreatment types influenced adolescent NSSI behaviors and the mediating role of diurnal cortisol, using a longitudinal design. The sample included 295 Chinese adolescents (M age = 10.79 years, SD = 0.84 years; 67.1% boys). The study employed latent profile analysis to identify childhood maltreatment patterns and conducted path analysis to examine the mediating mechanism. Four maltreatment patterns were identified: Low Maltreatment (67.8%), High Neglect (15.6%), Moderate Maltreatment (10.2%), and High Abuse with Moderate Neglect (6.4%). Furthermore, compared to the Low Maltreatment profile, adolescents in the High Neglect profile were at increased risk for later NSSI behaviors through higher waking cortisol levels, while those in the High Abuse with Moderate Neglect profile were at increased risk through a steeper diurnal slope. Disturbances in diurnal cortisol rhythm serve as a pathway through which childhood maltreatment "gets under the skin" to lead to adolescent NSSI behaviors. These findings offer promise for identifying maltreated youth at risk for NSSI behaviors and informing targeted prevention strategies.

There has been evidence suggesting that cortisol is related to subjective well-being. (i.e., positive affect, negative affect, life satisfaction). However, longitudinal associations between diurnal cortisol and subjective well-being remain inadequately explored, and less is known about how combinations of multiple diurnal cortisol indicators may impact subjective well-being. To address these gaps, the current study revealed heterogeneity in diurnal cortisol patterns and examined whether these diurnal cortisol patterns were prospectively associated with subjective well-being six months and one year later among 304 Chinese children and adolescents aged 9-13 (Mage = 10.80, SD = 0.84; 67.1 % boys). Latent profile analysis, a person-centered approach, was conducted using multiple diurnal cortisol indicators (i.e., waking cortisol level, cortisol awakening response, diurnal cortisol slope, area under the curve, and bedtime cortisol level), and identified four distinct diurnal cortisol patterns: steep/medium (57.6 %), moderate/high (25.7 %), flat/high (10.5 %), and steep/low (6.2 %). The flat/high pattern, characterized by sustained elevated cortisol levels throughout the day, was associated with impaired subjective well-being six months and one year later. The moderate/high pattern, which had the same waking cortisol level as the flat/high pattern but demonstrated lower cortisol awakening response and steeper diurnal cortisol slope, was associated with more negative affect six months later. These findings facilitate understanding the heterogeneity in diurnal cortisol rhythm and their implications to subjective well-being over time, which may support targeted psychosocial interventions for promoting subjective well-being among children and adolescents.

Comprising a substantial proportion of the global youth population, Chinese youth play critical roles in Chinese and global societies. Yet extensive research on the development of Chinese youth has mainly taken a deficit approach. A comprehensive understanding of their holistic developmental profiles and their profiles' associations with social determinants of health (SDOHs) is needed. This person-centered study collected data from a nationally representative sample of 16,317 Chinese youth (M age  = 13.13 ± 2.52 years, 47.94% girls) on their negative and positive developmental indicators and key SDOHs. Four distinct profiles were identified: lower positive , moderately positive, thriving , and higher positive but highest negative (troubled). The likelihood of different profile memberships among youth was significantly predicted by the SDOHs examined. The findings revealed diverse coexisting patterns of negative and positive indicators and underscored the need to attend to SDOHs, which may generate differentially favorable profiles among youth through unequal exposure to stress or benefit from allocated resources.