Guest Editor(s)
Dr. Lei Lu
Email: lucas@pku.edu.cn
Affiliation: School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, Peking University, Beijing, China
Homepage:
Research Interests: Mental health promotion across family, school, and early work contexts; dyadic relationships (parent-child, teacher-student, mentor-newcomer); youth and emerging-adult wellbeing; resilience, coping, and prevention; digital/AI-enabled psychosocial environments
Dr. Yiyong Zhou
Email: zhouyy@stu.pku.edu.cn
Affiliation: School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, Peking University, Beijing, China
Homepage:
Research Interests: Youth and emerging-adult mental health; relational and dyadic processes across family, school, and early-career settings; leadership and interpersonal climate; creativity, stress, and psychological adaptation; longitudinal and multilevel methods
Summary
Mental health promotion across childhood, adolescence, and emerging adulthood is increasingly understood as embedded in close relationships rather than residing solely within the individual. Parents and children, siblings, peer dyads, teacher–student pairs, mentor–mentee ties, and—at the threshold of adulthood—supervisor–newcomer relationships in internships and first jobs jointly shape emotional security, help-seeking, coping, engagement, and resilience. Yet much existing work still aggregates individuals or settings without modelling how dyadic processes—emotion transmission, support reciprocity, conflict cycles, boundary regulation, and collaborative coping—operate at the relational level.
This special issue invites empirical and conceptual studies that advance mental health promotion by foregrounding dyadic and relational mechanisms within family, school, and early-career contexts. We particularly welcome work that links observable interaction patterns, dyadic appraisals, or coupled longitudinal change to promotion-oriented outcomes (e.g., subjective wellbeing, prevention of internalizing distress, adaptive stress responses, school belonging, help-seeking intentions), as well as prevention-focused dyadic interventions in parenting, teaching, peer mentoring, and workplace onboarding for young workers. Cross-cultural and Chinese-context studies are especially encouraged.
Suggested themes include: parent–child and sibling dyadic processes; teacher–student alliance and unfairness perceptions; peer and mentoring dyads; school-to-work transition and supervisor–newcomer relationships; coupled longitudinal modelling (e.g., APIM, dyadic growth models); and dyadic interventions evaluated against mental-health-promotion outcomes. Manuscripts framed solely as general organizational behaviour without a youth/transition or relational mental-health-promotion lens are out of scope.
Keywords
mental health promotion, dyadic relationships, parent–child, teacher–student, peer mentoring, emerging adulthood, school-to-work transition, prevention, well-being
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