The aim of the current systematic review and meta-analysis was to examine the prevalence and incidence of somatoform symptoms and disorders (also referred to as medically unexplained symptoms, psychosomatic symptoms, functional syndromes, somatization disorder, or somatic symptom disorder) in childhood and adolescence. The PRISMA guidelines were followed, and the review was registered prior to initiation (PROSPERO CRD42022339735). Fitting search terms were entered in Web of Science, Scopus, and PubMed in June, 2022. Included were articles, reports, book chapters, and conference papers that reported on the prevalence or incidence rates of somatoform symptoms and disorder in under-18-year-olds with empirical primary data; these needed to be published in English or German. Publications were excluded if they focused on abuse, trauma, serious illness, or hypochondria, as well as if they had a qualitative or experimental (intervention) study design. To be included in the meta-analysis, studies needed to report values suitable to calculate a pooled prevalence or incidence rate. After the full-text screening, 33 articles remained, of which 29 were used for the meta-analysis. The quality evaluation criteria proposed by Loney and colleagues (1998) were utilized for quality assessment. The pooled global prevalence rate was 31.0% for somatoform symptoms and 3.3% for somatoform disorders, yet heterogeneity remained high. The noteworthy prevalence rates have important implications for healthcare professionals, as well as school nurses and counselors.

Bullying is a major social problem that is receiving increased attention in society and research. The overarching goal of the current study was to identify risk and protective factors of bullying examining direct effects between peer relationship, emotion regulation, and bullying involvement. Therefore, a cross-sectional study was conducted with students (55.7% female) between the ages of 10 and 15 ( ; ). Path model analysis revealed that trust had a negative effect on victimization, dysfunctional emotion regulation had a positive effect on perpetration and victimization, alienation had a positive effect on dysfunctional emotion regulation, and victimization and communication had a positive effect on functional emotion regulation. Additionally, dysfunctional emotion regulation strategies mediate the path from alienation to bullying and to victimization. Study results underline the importance of considering the bullying dynamic from a combined perspective of intra- and interindividual factors. The results partially confirmed the hypotheses and contribute to our knowledge about individual and contextual correlates of bullying in adolescents. The present findings suggest that group facilitation with the entire class in team building could be a useful intervention to strengthen peer relationships as well as the relationships between classmates and teachers and students.

The moral self is increasingly being debated in research, i.e., what causes children to internalise and evaluate the importance of certain moral values. The aim of the present study is to analyse associations between parental warmth and harsh parenting, temperamental self-regulation (inhibitory control and impulsivity), and the moral self in middle childhood. A total of 194 (n = 52 children with special educational needs in emotional–social development) six- to eleven-year-old children (M_age = 8.53, SD_age = 1.40) and their primary caregivers (M_age = 40.41, SD_age = 5.94) participated in this cross-sectional questionnaire study. Parental warmth and impulsivity were associated with the moral self. Impulsivity mediated the relationship between harsh parenting as well as parental warmth and the moral self. Results are discussed in terms of their relevance to social information processing theory. The importance of parenting and temperamental self-regulation is discussed as implications that may in turn strengthen children’s moral selves.

Bullying in school and cyberbullying are highly relevant issues. Students with special educational needs in emotional–social development and learning show individual characteristics that could be risk factors for bullying perpetration and victimization (e.g., externalizing behavior problems or poor social skills). Therefore, the present study was carried out to explore differences in school bullying and cyberbullying between adolescents without and with the aforementioned special educational needs. A cross‐sectional questionnaire study was carried out with N = 649 (M_age = 13.66, SD = 2.17, 61% boys and 39% girls) participants from Lower Saxony (Germany). Analyses of covariance only revealed differences regarding school bullying. Adolescents with special educational needs in emotional–social development were significantly more often bullying perpetrators. For the victim role, there are no differences between the groups without and with special educational needs in emotional–social development and in learning. The externalizing behavior problems of adolescents were considered to be the main predictor of bullying behavior and victim experiences. To imply targeted bullying interventions and preventions further research is needed focusing on characteristics, risk, and protective factors of special educational needs in emotional–social development.

Bullying and victimization have been of interest to a wide variety of disciplines for years due to their serious consequences (Zych et al., 2019). The focus has primarily been on personality factors which have significant associations with bullying perpetration. These factors include CU traits, empathy, and moral disengagement (e.g., Gini, 2006; Thornberg et al., 2015; Zych et al., 2019). However, the relation between those constructs and bullying perpetrator behaviors are unclear and have not been integrated in a single study. Additionally, studies suggest that students with special education support needs are overrepresented in bullying dynamics (e.g., Hartley et al., 2015). Therefore, the objective of this study was to examine whether moral disengagement and empathy act as mediators of CU traits on bullying perpetrator behavior while controlling age, gender and special educational needs. The sample consists of 201 students (M_age = 12.85; SD = 1.37) which were enrolled in schools in Germany. High CU traits were associated with low cognitive and affective empathy and high moral disengagement. Additionally, special educational needs were associated with higher moral disengagement. Moral disengagement mediates the relationship between CU traits and bullying. These findings expand the knowledge of influencing factors in the bullying dynamic and have significant implications for prevention and intervention practices.

This study investigates the associations of adolescents callous-unemotional traits with moral constructs and the interplay of various outcomes. The present study builds on the lack of research and focuses on the longitudinal relationships between CU-traits, moral identity, moral emotion attribution and externalizing behavior problems in adolescence. The included variables were collected at test time points T1 and T2. To determine the predictive, and stability links among the variables, a cross-lagged model in SPSS AMOS 26 was conducted. Time stability path estimates were moderate to highly stable over time for all included variables. Significant cross lagged paths of moral identity_T1 on moral emotion attribution_T2, CU-traits_T1 on moral identity_T2, externalizing behavior problems_T1 on moral emotion attributions_T2 and externalizing behavior problems_T1 on CU-traits_T2, could be found.