Building Resilience on Adolescent Mental Health Associated with Emerging Risk and Protective Factors among Ethnic Groups

Gizem Arat

doi:10.5539/jedp.v4n2p82

Abstract

A bulk of studies have focused on systematically catalogued risk and protective factors (e.g., parental monitoring, peer, neighborhood support) in terms of adolescent mental health status concerning resilience; however, they did not display any improvement regarding adolescent mental health, particularly in school-based interventions. Therefore, I suggested that whether other emerging factors (e.g., nutrition, physical activity) could be beneficial to promote effective school-based interventions. Hence, I examined adolescent mental health outcomes (depression and suicidality) associated with dietary patterns, physical activity, social support, watching TV, video/computer games, and sleeping habits factors regarding resilience approach. A secondary data analysis was employed based on the 2011 national Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) among 15,364 12-18 year-old African American, Asian, and Caucasian adolescents. Regarding nutrition, low levels of fruit, vegetable, potato, and fruit juice were associated with higher odds of depression, suicidal ideation, suicide attempts, for the most part among diverse ethnicities. Similarly, greater green salad intake resulted in lower odds of poor mental health outcomes among Asians and Caucasians. Next, consistent with current literature, low levels of social support in schools and higher levels of joining a sport team were strong predictors of poor mental health outcomes among overall ethnic groups. Lastly, healthy sleeping patterns, greater physical activity, low levels of being bullied in school, cyber bullied, and video/computer games increased the risk of poor mental health outcomes among adolescents.

Highlights

Adolescence is a vital transitional life stage between childhood and adulthood in which effective-school based interventions become salient (Theron, Liebenberg, & Malindi, 2014) to improve adolescent mental health status
The resilience factors which displayed diverse patterns of associations with physical activity, being bullied in school, cyber being bullied, social support, consumption of vegetable, fruit, milk, breakfast, soft drink, video/computer games, and healthy sleeping habits for overall ethnicities based on mental health outcomes were displayed (Table 2)
Low levels of physical activity resulted in lower odds of suicidal ideation among African-Americans and Caucasians, while it was associated with decreased likelihood of suicide plan among Caucasians, and suicide attempts among African-Americans and Caucasians

Summary

Introduction

Adolescence is a vital transitional life stage between childhood and adulthood in which effective-school based interventions become salient (Theron, Liebenberg, & Malindi, 2014) to improve adolescent mental health status. The World Health Organization (WHO) recognizes the significance of better mental health outcomes of adolescents and targets to enhance the effectiveness of current interventions. Within this scope, an extensive research have investigated resilience regarding several catalogued and repeated factors such as parental monitoring (Li, Fang, Stanton, Su, & Wu, 2003; Lipps et al, 2012), peer support (Wu, Palinkas, & He, 2010), school (King, 2001), spirituality/religious beliefs (Hill & Pargament, 2003), and neighborhood collectivity (Murry, Gaylord-Harden, Berkel, Copeland-Linder, & Nation, 2011; Pettit, Bates, Dodge, & Meece, 1999) associated with better adolescent mental health outcomes.

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Results

Conclusion