A Child-Centered Framework for Determining Mental Distress Severity and Liability: Evidence from Chinese Judicial Practice

Compensation for mental distress in preschool children is a crucial mechanism for protecting their personality rights, yet current judicial practice in China relies heavily on judicial discretion and lacks child-sensitive standards for determining severity. Following the enactment of the Preschool Education Law of the People's Republic of China in 2025, the principle of the Best Interests of the Child has placed new behavioral and developmental requirements on decision-making, particularly regarding the recognition of children's expressive limitations and psychological vulnerability. Drawing on representative judicial cases, this research identifies inconsistencies in current adjudication-primarily between factual presumption and medical proof-and highlights their failure to reflect preschoolers' developmental characteristics. To address this gap, we construct a child-centered liability determination framework integrating the Lundy model of child participation and Nussbaum's Capabilities Approach. This framework provides a structured method for incorporating children's voices into proceedings and offers multidimensional criteria for assessing capability impairment as an indicator of mental distress severity. These findings suggest that the framework can help reduce excessive discretion, strengthen developmental sensitivity, and promote more consistent and equitable adjudication. Beyond the Chinese context, this research offers an analytical lens for advancing international discussions on child-centered mental distress assessment and children's rights protection.