The self-esteem of students may be significantly associated with their academic performance. However, past research in developing contexts on this issue is limited, particularly among early adolescents. Using a sample of 3101 students from rural primary and junior high schools in China, this study measured their self-esteem by the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES) and explored its association with academic performance. Our findings indicate that students in rural China had both significantly lower self-esteem and a higher prevalence of low self-esteem when compared to past studies of similarly aged students both from urban China and internationally. Furthermore, there was a strong positive correlation between a student’s self-esteem and academic performance. A one-SD increase in RSES score (indicating better self-esteem) was associated with an increase of 0.12 SD in standardized math scores (p < 0.001), and students with low self-esteem (RSES score < 25) scored lower on math tests by 0.14 SD (p < 0.001), which were robust and consistent when employing the propensity score matching method. Our study expands the growing body of empirical evidence on the link between self-esteem and academic performance among rural youth in developing countries and emphasizes the need to improve their self-esteem with the aim of helping them achieve academically.

Behavioral strengths and difficulties among children and adolescents may be significantly associated with their academic performance; however, the evidence on this issue for rural youth in developing contexts is limited. This study explored the prevalence and correlates of mental health from three specific dimensions—internalizing problems, externalizing problems, and prosocial behavior—measured by the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), and the association of these dimensions with academic performance in math among a sample of 1500 students in rural China. Our findings indicated that students in rural China had worse behavioral difficulties and poorer prosocial skills when compared to most past studies conducted inside and outside of China. In addition, total difficulties and prosocial scores on the SDQ were significantly associated with student math test scores, as students whose externalizing, internalizing, and prosocial scores were in the abnormal range scored lower in math by 0.35 SD, 0.23 SD, and 0.33 SD, respectively. The results add to the growing body of empirical evidence related to the links between social environment, mental health, and academic performance in developing countries, highlighting the importance of students’ mental health for their academic performance, and of understanding risk factors in the social environment among rural youth in developing countries.

Background: Early childhood caregivers are exposed to intensive caregiving demands and have a high risk of depression. Guided by the family stress process model and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), this cross-sectional study examined whether psychological flexibility mediates the association between parenting stress and depression. Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted among 1140 Chinese primary caregivers of infants aged 0–36 months in Ya’an, Sichuan, China, from 9 October 2022 to 8 October 2025 using convenience sampling. Validated scales included the Parenting Stress Index-Short Form (PSI-SF), Acceptance and Action Questionnaire-II (AAQ-II) (Higher AAQ-II scores reflected lower psychological flexibility), and Patient Health Questionnaire-8 (PHQ-8). Hayes’ PROCESS Model 4, with 5000 bootstrap resamples, was adopted for the mediation analysis. Results: Parenting stress was positively associated with depressive symptoms (r = 0.335, p < 0.01) (weak-to-moderate effect size). Psychological flexibility exerted a partial mediating effect between the two variables, and the indirect effect accounted for 45% of the total effect. Caregivers with lower household income, lower educational level, and those caring for children aged 0–12 months reported significantly higher depression (all p < 0.05). Conclusions: Parenting stress is an important risk factor for depression, and psychological flexibility plays a significant partial mediating role in this relationship. ACT-based interventions targeting psychological flexibility may hold implications for depression among early childhood caregivers.

Language development and the home language environment during early childhood are critical for long-term child outcomes. Caregiver mental health may influence early language outcomes directly, but it can also introduce perception bias, which refers to the discrepancies between caregiver self-assessments and the actual status of child language outcomes. This study examines the associations between caregivers mental health symptoms and (1) child language development and home language environment, and (2) caregiver perception bias in self-report assessments of child language development and home language environment. The stduy recruited 137 rural Chinese households with children aged 16–24 months. Objective measures of child language development and the home language environment were collected using Language Environment Analysis (LENA) technology. Caregiver perception bias were measured by the descrepency between the objective and caregiver self-report measurements. Results show that caregiver anxiety and stress symptoms were linked to poor child language development, while symptoms of depression and anxiety symptoms were associated with less stimulating home language environment. Caregivers with depressive and anxiety symptoms tended to overestimate their children’s language development, and those with depressive symptoms also overestimated their own verbal inputs. These findings call for caution when implementing self-report assessments of early childhood development.