Relationship of Mental Stress of Middle School Students and Campus Safety Atmosphere with Psychosocial Safety Behaviors

BACKGROUND: Incidents of violence, such as school bullying, are mainly caused by excessive mental stress of students, which will also lead to all kinds of psychologically unsafe behaviors. The emotion regulation ability of students and the safety atmosphere level of campus will be considerably conducive to relieving the mental stress of students. This study aims to analyze the relationships of mental stress and regulatory emotional self-efficacy (RES) among students and campus safety atmosphere with their psychosocial safety behaviors (PSB). METHODS: A total of 120 class teachers and 365 students from three junior high schools in Henan Province, China were selected as the study objects in 2019. Then, middle school students and RES, campus safety atmosphere, and PSB scales were assessed through a mental stress scale. RESULTS: Mental stress (r=–0.8) of middle school students and campus safety atmosphere (r=0.86) had a significant negative and positive influence on their PSB, respectively. RES played a mediating role in the negative correlation between the mental stress of middle school students and their PSB (r=–0.57). Campus safety atmosphere could moderate the relationship between mental stress and RES (r=0.12). Campus safety atmosphere could moderate the mediating effect on the relationship between mental stress of middle school students and their PSB. CONCLUSION: Mental stress of middle school students will give rise to the occurrence of their psychologically unsafe behaviors. The improvement of the campus safety atmosphere level can effectively mitigate the mental stress of students to reduce the occurrence of unsafe behaviors.