Mental Health and Interpersonal Relationships Impact in Psychological and Physical Symptoms During Adolescence

Abstract

This article aims to understand and characterize the impact of factors of mental health and interpersonal relationships on physical and psychological symptoms in adolescents. It includes 8215 students, of which 4327 are girls (52.7%), with an average age of 14.36 years ( SD =2.28) that participate in the study Health Behavior in School aged Children/HBSC. Descriptive statistics, ANOVA analysis and logistic regressions were performed for two dependent variables in study – psychological symptoms and physical symptoms. In general, girls show values in relation to physical and psychological symptoms, anxiety/stress and depression that are less positive when compared to boys. Older adolescents show values that are less positive in the same variables, except for anxiety/stress, which presents higher values in younger adolescents. Girls and older adolescents have lower positive values with regard to relationships with family, teachers and colleagues, than boys and younger adolescents. The female gender, higher values of depression followed by less support from the family contribute strongly to the explanation of psychological and physical symptoms. It is possible to verify that the variance explained by gender and by depression is higher in the case of psychological symptoms when compared to physical symptoms, and that the variance explained by family relationship is higher in the case of physical symptoms when compared with psychological symptoms. This study identifies a positive relationship between mental health (less physical and psychological symptoms, lower depression and lower anxiety) and more positive relationships with family, colleagues and teachers, as well as gender and age specificities. These results have important implications in terms of public policies for the family and the school contexts.