Objectives: The study aims to investigate the state anxiety of parents of special needs children during the 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) epidemic and the influence of parental stress, social support, and other related variables on the anxiety of parents.Methods: Bespoke questionnaires of children’s and parent’s mental and behavioral problems during the epidemic were used in the study. We also used the State Anxiety Inventory (S-AI), the Parenting Stress Index—Short Form-15 (PSI-SF-15), the NEO Five-Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI), and the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (MSPSS). The data used in the study were pooled from an online survey of parents of special needs children and analyzed by one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and multiple linear regression.Results: Overall, 1,451 individuals were included, of which 402 were fathers (27.71%) and 1,049 were mothers (72.29%). ANOVA results showed that educational background, family monthly income, and type of their child’s disability made parents’ state anxiety significantly different. The results of multiple linear regression showed that during the epidemic, social support negatively predicted parents’ state anxiety (B = −0.15, p < 0.001), whereas parenting stress (B = 0.07, p = 0.001) and parental mental and behavioral problems (B = 0.37, p < 0.001) positively predicted parents’ state anxiety.Conclusions: During the outbreak of COVID-19, parents of special needs children suffered mental and behavioral problems, together with parenting stress and social support, which influenced their state anxiety. These findings can be used to develop relevant psychological interventions to improve the mental health of vulnerable groups during a pandemic like COVID-19.

Awe is an emotion experience when individuals encounter with such powerful stimulate beyond their own understanding. Guided by conceptual analysis of awe as a trait positive emotion, we tested the hypothesis that dispositional awe results in an improvement of individual's self-transcendence meaning of life (STML) and affects future time perspective, and increase prosocial behavior. Mediational data demonstrate that the effects of awe on prosociality are explained, by improving STML self and future time perspective. These findings indicate that awe may help situate individuals within broader social contexts and enhance collective concern.

Although a large body of research has indicated that cyberbullying victimization is a crucial risk factor for adolescent non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) behavior, the mediating and moderating mechanisms underlying this relationship remain unclear. To address this research gap, this study, based on the social control theory and the organism-environment interaction model, was designed to test whether school engagement mediated the relationship between cyberbullying victimization and adolescent NSSI and whether this mediating effect was moderated by sensation seeking. A sample of 1,102 adolescents (M_age = 13.17; SD = 0.69) anonymously completed the questionnaires. The results showed that the positive association between cyberbullying victimization and adolescent NSSI was mediated by school engagement. Moreover, this indirect link was significant for adolescents with high-level sensation seeking but non-significant for adolescents with low-level sensation seeking. These findings highlight school engagement as a potential mechanism linking cyberbullying victimization to adolescent NSSI, and high sensation seeking was an important risk factor to amplify this indirect effect. Intervention programs aimed at reducing NSSI among adolescents may benefit from the current research.

Stress is closely associated with smartphone addiction. Nevertheless, there is a dearth of studies investigating the potential variation in the effect of stress on smartphone addiction based on the specific addiction type and gender. We conducted a cross-sectional questionnaire survey among 596 high school students. The results revealed that the effect size of stress on smartphone addiction varied across different types of addiction. The strongest relationship was observed between stress and social media addiction, followed by the relationship between stress and information acquisition addiction. Furthermore, gender played a significant moderating role in stress and three types of smartphone addiction. Specifically, stress was strongly associated with information acquisition addiction overall, with no significant gender differences observed. In contrast, stress exhibited a strong correlation with social media addiction, which was significantly more prevalent among females. On the other hand, game addiction and short-form video addiction were both strongly associated with stress, but showed significantly higher prevalence among males. This study enhances current research by offering supplementary insights into the correlation between stress and smartphone addiction, as well as exploring the potential implications of intervening in smartphone addiction.