With the increasing popularity and accessibility of video games, the public concern about their effects - positive and negative - has also increased. In this regard, this systematic review sought to identify and thematically analyze recent studies (in the last five years) and report on video games' epidemiological characteristics and outcomes. A systematic database search was done on ScienceDirect, APA PsycINFO, Emerald, and Scopus databases for articles published from January 1, 2017, to April 1, 2022. The Meta XL software - an add-in for Microsoft Excel - was used to calculate the pooled prevalence level of video game addiction. The database search yielded a total of 693 non-duplicate articles. After applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria, 27 articles were selected to be included in the systematic review. Along with this, 12 articles were considered for the final meta-analysis. The pooled prevalence level of gaming addiction was 5.0 % (95 % CI, 2.1-8.8 %). The I² value was 99.297 with a p-value of 0.000. The factors that accompanied addictive video gaming were psychological, social, and personal. An addictive gaming behavior was characterized by spending an above-average time on gaming, doing most of the gaming online, and gaming activities interfering with sleep patterns. Some predictors of addictive gaming were emotional dependence, social detachment, increased gaming time, preference for playing online than offline, and increased emotional and psychological stress. Engaging in addictive gaming led to adverse outcomes such as lower academic scores, depression, and anxiety, as well as decreased self-esteem, life satisfaction, and social support. From the collected findings it could be concluded that extreme playing of video games can be classified as addictive. Following the identification of risk factors, appropriate corrective or interventional measures should be developed and applied coherently to newer statistical data.

The present study aims to expand the understanding of the effects of dispositional happiness and self-esteem, as dispositional traits, on the health of teachers, as well as to understand the role played by the working environment in generating positive affection, thus mediating between the dispositional traits and teachers’ health. Two hundred and eighty-two full-time in-service teachers (93.6% female) from Rome (Italy) took part in this study. Their ages ranged from 26 to 55 (M = 40.49 years, SD = 5.93). Participants’ teaching experience ranged from 1 to 31 years (M = 9.95 years, SD = 5.65). 30.6% of participants taught in kindergarten (for children aged 0–5 years), 42.6% in primary schools (for children aged 6–11 years), 15.8% in middle schools and 10.9% in high schools. A questionnaire was administered, containing: the Subjective Happiness Scale (SHS); the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES); The adapted version for teachers of the School Children Happiness Inventory (Ivens, 2007); the Physical and Mental Health Scales (SF12). The data were analyzed using the MPLUS software, version 8. Our results showed that teacher happiness at work partially mediates the relationship between dispositional happiness and teacher health, and fully mediates the relationship between self-esteem and teacher health. To the best of our knowledge, the mediational role of teacher happiness has not been addressed before, concerning these dimensions. At the same time, our findings confirmed the role of self-esteem in endorsing health-related behaviors, thus promoting physical and mental health. Moreover, according to our study findings, when teachers acknowledge their workplace as a context in which they feel happy, the impact of dispositional happiness and self-esteem on health conditions is higher. Effective measures to promote teachers’ well-being are discussed.

Background: Although most infants consolidate their sleep habits during the first year of life, for many children, sleep is described as disrupted during toddlerhood. Along with individual child variables such as temperamental characteristics, parenting behaviors play a key role in determining children’s sleep–wake patterns. The aims of the current study were to evaluate the relationship among toddlers’ sleep quality, emotion regulation, bedtime routines, parental bedtime involvement, parental perceived social support and stress, and to integrate a novel combination of the aforementioned dimensions into predictive models of toddlers’ sleep quality and parental stress. Methods: One hundred and sixty parents with 2–3-year-old children filled out the following self-report questionnaires: the Parent–Child Sleep Interaction Scale; the Emotion Regulation Checklist; the Social Provisions Scale; and an ad-hoc questionnaire to assess parental involvement in everyday and bedtime care for children. Three multiple regression analyses were conducted by regressing maternal and paternal parenting stress and infant’s quality sleep onto the independent variables described above. Results: Toddlers’ emotion regulation and parental psychosocial functioning were related to parental stress. Toddlers’ night awakenings and the time required by toddlers to fall asleep were related to parental distress. Conclusions: The findings evidenced the bidirectional associations among the studied variables, highlighting the protective role of social support in reducing parenting stress and of paternal bedtime involvement in improving toddlers’ sleep quality.

Background: The current cross-sectional study examines a model that was designed to advance understanding of the interplay between compassion towards teachers expressed by teaching colleagues, subjective happiness, proactive strategies and kindergarten teachers’ levels of work engagement, and perceived working environment fit. Methods: The research was conducted with a sample of 319 full-time in-service kindergarten teachers at Italian public preschools—a context in which a few previous studies have been carried out. Self-report questionnaires were administered: The Subjective Happiness Scale, the Santa Clara Brief Compassion Scale, the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale, the Proactive Strategy Scale, and the Teacher-working environment fit scale. Data were analyzed by using the structural equation modelling (SEM) approach. Results: Results show that compassion and subjective happiness have a direct positive total effect on work engagement, whereas the effects of compassion and subjective happiness on experienced working environment fit suggest that the association among constructs is mediated by the role of proactive strategies. Conclusions: Based on these findings, we strongly advocate that educational policy makers and head teachers’ pay close attention to the areas of personal and collective resources and work-related well-being, with a view to effectively address the promotion of early childhood teachers’ work engagement and working environment fit.

The present quantitative multi-trait cross-sectional study aims to gain a better understanding of the network of relationship between subjective happiness, compassion, levels of work engagement, and proactive strategies (self- and co-regulation) in a sample of teachers. Participants were 187 full-time in-service teachers (89% female; age M = 48.5; SD = 7.88) from Rome, Italy. We hypothesized that subjective happiness and compassion of early childhood teachers would be related with work engagement in such a way that subjective happiness would promote the engagement of teachers. In a similar fashion, we theorized that subjective happiness would be positively related to self- and co-regulation strategies and that proactive strategies would be in turn associated to work engagement. As expected, the results revealed that subjective happiness and compassion showed effects on work engagement and that this association among constructs was mediated by the role of proactive strategies (β = 0.22, p < 0.001; β = 0.37, p < 0.001, respectively). Proactive strategies also have a significant direct effect on work engagement (β = 0.56, p < 0.001). The study’s findings suggest the importance of investing in the quality of the working environment.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers have been trying to identify which personal resources can contribute to minimizing the mental health costs in students incurred due to the restrictions that disrupted safety and predictability in their academic lives. The aim of the study was to verify if and how individual factors (resilience and positivity) and socio-environmental factors (social support and nationality) allow prediction of the level of perceived stress. University students (n = 559) from Poland, Serbia, and Italy were surveyed using the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10), the Brief Resilience Scale (BRS), the Positivity Scale (PS), and the Interpersonal Support Evaluation List (ISEL-12). Personal resources—positivity, resilience, and support—were found to be positively interrelated and significantly associated with stress levels. Additionally, gender and nationality differentiated stress levels. A general linear model (GLM) showed that levels of perceived stress are best explained by resilience, positivity, tangible support, and gender. The results obtained can strengthen students’ awareness of personal resources and their protective role in maintaining mental health, as well as contribute to the creation of prevention-oriented educational activities. Nationality was not a significant predictor of the level of perceived stress, which highlights the universality of examined predictors among university students from different countries and suggests that interventions aimed at enhancing these resources could benefit students across different cultural contexts.