Abstract
This longitudinal, quantitative survey examined factors predicting 1077 Norwegian adolescents` emotional problems during Upper Secondary School (grades I–III, approximately 16–19 years old) considering the following research question: “To what extent do students in Upper Secondary School experience emotional problems, and how are these problems predicted by gender, academic/social self-concept, coping beliefs, appearance pressure and school stress?”. The mentioned variables were scrutinized through analysis of frequencies, zero order correlations and structural equation modeling. Results verified previous findings that there was an increase in emotional problems for adolescents, especially among girls. Furthermore, the study results indicate that coping beliefs is a crucial factor when it comes to the perception of pressure and stress, and the subsequent development of emotional health problems.
Highlights
Mental health problems are a matter of major public health concern and are among the leading contributors to the health burden for children and adolescents globally (Erskine et al, 2015; Whiteford et al, 2013)
Compared to the British norms we can conclude that boys reported less emotional problems than expected, and girls reported about twice as many abnormal and borderline levels of emotional problems
The coping belief, measured as coping competence, is considerably lower for girls compared to boys, while the perception of appearance pressure and school stress are higher to the same degree
Summary
Mental health problems are a matter of major public health concern and are among the leading contributors to the health burden for children and adolescents globally (Erskine et al, 2015; Whiteford et al, 2013). The literature usually separates between mental problems and disorders. A mental disorder can be assessed when the symptoms are in coherence with the criteria in a diagnostic system, such as ICD10 (World Health Organization, 2018) or DSM-5 (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Mental health disorders are concluded by health personnel based on diagnostic interviews, while it is common to identify the extent of mental health problems through the use of questionnaires. In the following we refer to mental health problems when we discuss mental health among adolescents
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