The global COVID-19 pandemic significantly disrupted educational environments for all students when the majority of schools in the United States abruptly switched to remote learning. School climate, including support and structure, has been recognized as an important construct that influences student functioning. The current study explored student perceptions of school climate before school disruptions as a potential protective factor against negative outcomes during the pandemic. Middle school students (N = 225) completed assessments of their perceptions of school climate in Fall 2019 and self-reported internalizing symptoms in Spring 2020. Structural equation modeling was used to test both the association and directionality between school climate and internalizing symptoms. Positive perception of school climate before the pandemic was significantly associated with less internalizing symptoms during initial school closures, particularly for girls. The results highlight the importance of school climate in students' mental health, especially during periods of stress. Limitations and future directions are discussed.

The current meta-analysis investigates the parental support-youth depression association and whether this association varies by gender and stress. Studies published from 1983 to February 2021 were gathered via electronic search in six databases and a hand search of 14 journals. Studies that measured support from parents and youth depression were included. Depression intervention studies and studies that measured constructs conceptually distinct from social support were excluded. Using a random-effects model, the overall effect size based on 170 studies on N=114,674 participants was r = .27 (p < .001). Cross-sectional results supported the general benefits model with no evidence of parent gender differences, but results showed stronger associations between depression and support from parents as a unit compared to either mothers or fathers alone. Crosssectional results also showed larger effect sizes for girls compared to boys in the association between depression and support from parents and mothers. However, there was no evidence for parent or youth gender differences in any of the longitudinal analyses. A significant cross-sectional dampening effect of stress on maternal/paternal support for both boys and girls was uncovered but disappeared in longitudinal analyses, and stress-buffering effects of parental support emerged over time in longitudinal analyses. Bidirectional analyses demonstrated parent and child effects with no youth gender differences. Sensitivity analyses showed little evidence of publication bias or historical influences. Limitations include lack of information about support type and developmental differences. Results underscore the importance of including both mothers and fathers in depression prevention and intervention efforts.

Prosocial teasing is the positive playful form of relational aggression, and studies have found children engage in playful teasing more often than aggressive teasing. Therefore, understanding the basic characteristics or skills that contribute to the more complex social skill of prosocial teasing is important. The current study focused on the role of empathy in students' perception of their engagement in two different forms of relational behaviors, playful and aggressive. Associations between empathy and engagement in playful and aggressive relational behaviors were investigated with 389 fifth-grade students in the Midwest with the Social Skills Improvement System (SSIS) rating scale and modified Children's Social Behavior Scale-Self-Report (CSBS-S), along with gender interaction in those relationships. Results demonstrated that empathy was significantly and negatively related to the level of engagement in both relational aggression and prosocial teasing. No gender differences were found in levels of relational aggression or in prosocial teasing. Gender differences were observed in empathy, where girls reported higher levels of empathy than boys. Results indicated that empathy was a significant predictor of engagement in both relational aggression and prosocial teasing for both fifth-grade boys and girls. Implications concerning these findings are discussed.

This meta-analysis evaluated the relation between social support and depression in youth and compared the cumulative evidence for 2 theories that have been proposed to explain this association: the general benefits (GB; also known as main effects) and stress-buffering (SB) models. The study included 341 articles (19% unpublished) gathered through a search in PsycINFO, PsycARTICLES, ERIC, and ProQuest, and a hand search of 11 relevant journals. Using a random effects model, the overall effect size based on k = 341 studies and N = 273,149 participants was r = .26 (95% CI [.24, .28]), with robust support for the GB model and support for the SB model among medically ill youth. Stress-buffering analyses suggest that different stressful contexts may not allow youth to fully draw on the benefits of social support, and we propose value in seeking to better understand both stress-buffering (effects of social support are enhanced) and reverse stress-buffering (effects of social support are dampened) processes. Key findings regarding other moderators include a different pattern of effect sizes across various sources of support. In addition, gender differences were largely absent from this study, suggesting that social support may be a more critical resource for boys than is typically acknowledged. Results also demonstrated the importance of using instruments with adequate psychometric support, with careful consideration of methodological and conceptual issues. Building upon these collective findings, we provide recommendations for theory and practice, as well as recommendations for addressing limitations in the extant literature to guide future investigations. (PsycINFO Database Record