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Emotional wellbeing in adolescence develops within interconnected personal and relational systems, but the relative salience of family, peer, and school contexts may vary across sociocultural experiences. The present study examined associations among perceived functioning in school, family, and peer domains, everyday emotion-regulation difficulties, and affective emotional wellbeing in 79 third-year middle-school students in Rome (M age = 13.80 years, SD = 0.45; 45.6% female), including 42 adolescents without and 37 with a migratory background, defined as having at least one foreign-born parent. Participants completed self-report assessments of relational functioning across the three domains, emotion-regulation difficulties, and positive and negative affect. Two separately estimated observed-variable path models were used for exploratory purposes. Among adolescents with a migratory background, school ( β = 0.44, p = 0.002) and family ( β = 0.53, p < 0.001) indicators were independently associated with greater emotional wellbeing. No direct relational-context path to emotional wellbeing reached significance in the group without a migratory background. Emotion-regulation difficulties were not independently associated with emotional wellbeing in either group, and percentile bootstrap confidence intervals based on 5,000 resamples did not support indirect pathways through emotion regulation. The findings point to the possible importance of family and school as interconnected relational systems while providing no support for the hypothesized regulatory pathway in this sample. Given the modest subgroup sizes, cross-sectional design, single-item contextual indicators, and heterogeneous migratory-background category, the results should be considered exploratory and hypothesis-generating.
Francesca Federico, Michela Mellone, Sergio Melogno et al.
Armed conflict represents one of the most profound threats to the health, development, education, and future well-being of children and adolescents. Unlike adults, children experience war during critical periods of physical growth, neurological development, emotional maturation, education, and social formation. The consequences therefore extend beyond immediate injury or death and may influence nutrition, sleep, mental health, cognitive development, physical activity, education, family functioning, and long-term social participation. This comprehensive narrative review examines the multidimensional effects of armed conflict on children and adolescents, integrating evidence from child health, developmental science, mental health, public health, education, physical activity, sport science, resilience research, and humanitarian intervention literature. Particular attention is given to direct physical consequences, indirect health effects, psychological trauma, chronic stress, sleep disruption, developmental consequences, displacement, disruption of education and healthcare, nutrition, physical inactivity, and the potential role of sport and structured physical activity as protective environments. The review also examines evidence concerning resilience and interventions for conflict-affected children, emphasizing that resilience is not an individual trait alone but a dynamic process influenced by family, school, community, social protection, education, healthcare, and opportunities for safe physical activity. A contemporary case study concerning Iran in 2026 is included to illustrate how children may be directly affected in schools and civilian environments. The case study incorporates official UNICEF reporting and findings presented by the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran concerning the Minab school and Lamerd sports-center attacks. The evidence indicates that protecting children during armed conflict requires an integrated approach extending beyond emergency medical care. Child protection, education continuity, mental-health and psychosocial support, nutrition, sleep, physical activity, sport, family support, healthcare access, and protection of civilian infrastructure should be considered interconnected components of child health.
Mehdi Eskandari