Background: School closures during the COVID-19 pandemic may have exacerbated students’ loneliness, addictive gaming behaviors, and poor mental health. These mental health issues confronting young people are of public concern. Objective: This study aimed to examine the associations between loneliness and gaming addiction behaviors among young people in Hong Kong and to investigate how familial factors, psychological distress, and gender differences moderate these relationships. Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted in June 2020 when schools reopened after 6 months of school closures. Participants included 2863 children and adolescents in primary (Grades 4 to 6) and secondary (Grades 7 and 8) schools (female participants: 1502/2863, 52.5%). Chi-square tests, one-way analyses of variance, and independent-samples t tests were performed to compare the differences of distribution in gaming addiction behaviors across gender, age, and other sociodemographic characteristics. Multinomial logistic regression analyses were conducted to identify factors that relate to excessive or pathological gaming behaviors separately, in comparison with leisure gaming. Results: A total of 83.0% (2377/2863) of the participants played video games during the COVID-19 pandemic. The prevalence of excessive and pathological game addiction behaviors was 20.9% (597/2863) and 5.3% (153/2863), respectively. More male students had gaming addiction symptoms than female students. The multinomial logistic regressions showed that feeling lonely was associated with more problematic gaming behaviors, and the association was stronger for older female students. Low socioeconomic status, less parental support and less supervision, and poor mental health were risk factors for gaming addiction behaviors, especially among primary school students. Conclusions: Loneliness was associated with gaming addiction behaviors; the findings from this study suggested that this association was similar across gender and age groups among young people. Familial support and supervision during school closures can protect young people from developing problematic gaming behaviors. Results of this study have implications for prevention and early intervention on behalf of policy makers and game developers.

While the work-family interference in employees’ work experiences and turnover intention has been empirically supported in the previous literature, it remains unexplored in the social work domain in the Chinese context. Based on Conservation of Resources Theory, the current study aims to examine the impact of work-family interference and four specific sources of work support on social workers’ perceived job burnout and turnover intention. Using a representative sub-sample (N = 1,414) in a national survey of Chinese social workers, multiple OLS regression analyses with simple slope checks on moderation effects were conducted. The results indicate that work-family interference has a significant and negative impact on both burnout and turnover intention, whereas work support from one’s top leader and manager moderated and reversed this impact. The study’s findings suggest that Conservation of Resources Theory is well suited to recognize the factors implicated in the burnout and turnover intention of social workers in China. Future research involving family factors will contribute to understand the full mechanism of work-family interference on social workers’ work outcomes. Further exploration of possible measures in mitigating burnout and turnover are suggested.

Although work stress, turnover intention, and work–family conflicts among police officers have been extensively investigated, no studies have explored these issues simultaneously under the context of the coronavirus pandemic. Clearly, both work and family domains have been drastically affected by this global health crisis, and it is likely that each domain has a distinctive impact on work outcomes. Using survey data based on a representative random sample of 335 police officers in Hong Kong, this study examines the impacts of resource losses and gains across family and work domains on occupational stress and turnover intention amid the pandemic. A multiple regression indicates that both family-to-work and work-to-family conflicts lead to work stress and turnover intention among police officers. Among officers, supervisory support is negatively associated with turnover intention and moderates the impact of work-to-family conflicts on turnover intention. Finally, measures to mitigate work stress during public health disasters are discussed.

In China, 173 million adults have a mental disorder, 91.3 per cent of whom have never received professional help. Three factors—knowledge of mental illness, perceptions of the causes of mental illness and the influence of an individual's informal network—were examined to determine their impacts on help-seeking attitudes of Chinese people in Shanghai. A multistage cluster sampling method among six of the twenty districts in Shanghai was adopted. Five hundred and twenty-two participants filled out a questionnaire containing instruments that attempted to measure the three factors. Shanghai Chinese people who had stronger endorsement of psycho-social perspective of mental illness and contemporary treatment methods and weaker endorsement of traditional Chinese beliefs and treatment methods were more inclined to seek professional help. The correct recognition of depression and perceived helpfulness of close friends significantly and inversely predicted help-seeking in depression, whereas the perceived helpfulness of family members was positively related to the tendency to seek help in schizophrenia. This study underlines the need for public education programmes to improve the knowledge of mental illness among Shanghai Chinese people and to equip social workers with skills to assess mental health and engage family members and close friends of the family to help those with mental illness.