2.2 Mental health

Background: Life satisfaction is a key measure of adolescents’ well-being. In HBSC it has been measured by Cantril Ladder since 2001/2002.

Objective: to review how life satisfaction has been analyzed in national and international scientific papers and to present what has been learnt in a bio-ecological framing of evidence.

Methods: Studies were identified in the HBSC database of journal articles (as Currie & Morgan, 2020). Papers were included if the titles or abstracts included life satisfaction. Papers using the overall concept of mental health were also screened regarding life satisfaction. Conceptual and theoretical papers were excluded. Data extracted included time periods, aim, life satisfaction measures, determinants, and level.

Results: In total 74 articles were found; 39 national and 35 international studies. The Cantril Scale has been used as a continuous scale in 46 articles, a dichotomous or a three-scale variable. There were 30 studies on individual level, 21 studies on microlevel (16 family; 5 school), two on meso-level and 21 on macro-level (including trends, gender, country income & wealth, meritocratic belief, trust, and policies). Inequality hampers life satisfaction, whether caused by gender, family affluence, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or other related factors. Bullying has a long-lasting negative effect on life satisfaction. Being physically active is associated with higher life satisfaction, while use of alcohol, tobacco, and cannabis is associated with reduced life satisfaction.

Conclusions: Life satisfaction is a key factor in the HBSC study. It is influenced by both personal factors in people’s lives and community and societal circumstances.

Purpose: Sexual minority youth (SMY) are disproportionately affected by mental health problems, but there is much less evidence on factors that enable them to live happy and balanced lives. This study explores mental health inequalities in SMY and within Ireland. A nationally representative sample of 12 to 17-year-old adolescents in Ireland was analysed to investigate how SMY fare on mental health outcomes compared to their heterosexual peers.

Methods: A subsample of 1090 adolescents (mean age: 15.64 ± 1.21, percentage girls: 64.8%) participating in the 2018 Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) study was studied. Using case-control matching, we tested associations between self-reported attraction and mental health outcomes including well-being and life satisfaction. An iterative matching technique was used which accounted for the gender, age group and social class of SMY with matched heterosexual youth.

Results: Adolescents reporting both-gender attraction (OR = 2.73, 95% CI: 2.08–3.60) and same-gender attraction (OR = 1.62, 95% CI: 1.14–2.32) had significantly higher odds of poor life satisfaction than their heterosexual peers. Likewise, SMY groups had higher odds of experiencing multiple psychosomatic symptoms (OR = 1.48, 95% CI: 1.02–2.15 and OR = 2.82, 95% CI: 2.11–3.76, respectively). SMY were more likely to report poor body image and mental health issues, but not more likely to perceive high levels of everyday stress compared to their heterosexual peers.

Conclusion: Adolescents who identify as both- and same-gender attracted reported poorer mental health outcomes compared to their heterosexual peers, signifying SMY mental health inequalities in Ireland.

Background: High life satisfaction among adolescents could be considered as a psychological strength that facilitates positive adaptive development. Recent work shows the decline in high life satisfaction with age and there is considerable variance across Europe. The HBSC regions have been used to communicate and work together to help understand health behaviours of young adolescents.

Objectives: To examine trends in high life satisfaction among boys and girls in different countries by HBSC regions.

Methods: Proportions of high life satisfaction ( 9-10 on the Cantril Ladder) was analysed among 11- 13- and 15- years-old in HBSC countries in 2017/18 survey. Results were grouped by HBSC regions. Differences by zones were tested by ANOVA and linear regression analyses were performed with age as the independent variable and gender as a covariate for zone level data. Adjusted r2 was used to determine the closeness of fit for each region.

Results: There is a significant decline in high life satisfaction across countries in the HBSC network with increasing age of adolescents. There were substantial differences in the reduction by HBSC zones (F=8.36, p<.001). Countries in zone E had the highest proportion of high life satisfaction and zone C the lowest.

Conclusions: High life satisfaction is influenced by the national context. Some of the ontological designs of the regional zones may be considered through the strengthening and weakening of results by zones. The need for country-specific studies or by zones when investigating life satisfaction may improve our understanding of adolescents’ quality of life.

Background: Worldwide more than 80% of schoolchildren and adolescents fall short of the physical activity (PA) requirements set by World Health Organization (WHO). Specifically, between 11 and 15 years daily PA dropped among boys from 30 to 21%, among girls from 21 to 11% (Inchley et al. 2016).

Objective: We analysed how the PA is associated with life satisfaction among adolescent girls and boys.

Methods: Data were collected in April-June 2018 during the international HBSC survey in Lithuania (n = 4191, aged 13.9 ± 1.69 years). From self-report questionnaire, the indicators reflecting PA, life satisfaction, body image, somatic complaints, wellbeing, demographic, and socioeconomic status were analysed. Bivariate analysis used Chi-squared test, multivariate associations-logistic regression method.

Results: Moderate-to-vigorous PA was sufficient among 18% of schoolchildren, while 66% of respondents met vigorous PA requirements. For boys vigorous PA can be regarded as the predictor of better life satisfaction (OR = 1.63, p < 0.05), while for girls the moderate-to-vigorous PA is observed as a risk factor for lower life satisfaction at borderline significance (OR = 0.67, p = 0.053).

Conclusions: The found relationships of biological, psychological and socioeconomic factors with gender as a specific effect modifier indicate that PA intensity differently effect adolescents’ life satisfaction. In both genders, the perception of wellbeing strongly affects the potential influence of PA on life satisfaction. Schools, parents, and policy makers should enable the adolescents with more opportunities and equipment for vigorous rather than moderate-to-vigorous PA.