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. 2024 Dec 18;24(1):3467.
doi: 10.1186/s12889-024-20985-w.

Association of the previous experience of maternal migration absence with non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) in their school-aged children: a cross-sectional study in Anhui, China

Hailati Akezhuoli  1 , Shi Guo  2 , Honghui Zhao  1 , Jiayao Xu  1   3 , Qianwen Xie  4   5   6 , Xudong Zhou  1 , Jingjing Lu  7 , Lu Li  8   9   10
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Association of the previous experience of maternal migration absence with non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) in their school-aged children: a cross-sectional study in Anhui, China

Hailati Akezhuoli et al. BMC Public Health. .

Abstract

Background: Non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) emerged as an escalating health concern in youths worldwide, particularly in the vulnerable. In China, a burgeoning internal migration in human history has been tearing families apart, generating a surging number of left-behind children (LBC) with a lack of parental supervision. Despite the empirical acknowledgment of parental migration as a risk predictor of the NSSI among LBC, there remains a lack of understanding of the specific role of the maternal migration experience.

Objective: This study sought to determine the association of maternal migration experience and its characteristics in terms of age at initiation and length with 12-month NSSI among school-aged children.

Participants and setting: Data were collected by a self-administrated questionnaire survey conducted among a school-based sample of students in the Anhui province, China.

Methods: A total of 2476 participants were analyzed, and the Chi-squared tests and binary logistic regression analysis were employed.

Results: Compared with children whose father is currently migrating and the mother never migrated for work (FM-MN), children whose father never migrated but the mother previously migrated for work (FN-MP, OR = 2.21, 95% CI [1.27-3.84], p < 0.01) and children whose father is currently migrating and the mother previously migrated for work (FM-MP, OR = 1.46, 95% CI [1.00-2.13], p < 0.05) evidenced greater odds of the prevalence of 12-month NSSI. And also, a significantly higher risk for 12-month NSSI was found among FN-MP and FM-MP compared with children whose parents lived in the household and neither had ever migrated for work (FN-MN). For those children with maternal migration experience, while controlling for the paternal migration characteristics, there was no difference between before and after school age at initiation of migration in the risk of NSSI, nor were there any differences across 1-3, 4-6, and more than 6 years of maternal migration length CONCLUSIONS: Findings suggested the potential long-term effect of the experience of maternal migration on children and provided implications for the early identification and prevention of school-aged children at risk for NSSI, particularly within the maternal migrant family context.

Keywords: Age at migration; Left-behind children; Maternal migration; Migration length; Non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI).

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Conflict of interest statement

Declarations. Ethics approval and consent to participate: In study, ethical approval was granted by the Ethics Committee of Zhejiang University (Project Number ZGL201804-2). Informed consent was obtained from all subjects and/or their legal guardian(s). All methods were carried out in accordance with relevant guidelines and regulations. Consent for publication: Not applicable. Competing interests: The authors declare no competing interests.

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