Summary: | Abstract
Adolescence is an important developmental period. Young people
face many pressures and challenges, including growing academic expectations,
changing social relationships with family and peers, and the physical
and emotional changes associated with maturation. Mental health
is a broad concept, including positive mental health, mental health
problems and psychiatric diseases. This introductory paper addresses
the issue of positive mental health, and how existing data from
the Health Behaviour in School-aged Children study (HBSC) may be
used to deepen our knowledge of developments in mental health among
adolescents in the Nordic countries.
The Health Behaviour in School-Aged Children study is a WHO
collaborative cross-national study that now includes 48 countries,
collecting data every four years from 1984 to 2018 on health, well-being,
health behaviour and social environments. Data collection is carried
out in school classes via self-completion of questionnaires. An
asset of the study is that the HBSC focuses on understanding young
people’s health in their social context at family, peer, school,
neighbourhood, and country levels. The investment in the HBSC study
gives unique opportunities for high-quality research and monitoring
in the Nordic countries.
The on-going Nordic research collaboration on positive mental
health among adolescents uses the HBSC study as the research infrastructure
for analysing trends as well as collecting new data on positive
mental health. This special issue reports on trends when positive
perspectives have been guiding the analysis of available data. The
present research explores the potential of Nordic collaboration
and comparative studies of school-aged children in the Nordic countries.
|