School bullying and minority identity as a menace to mental well-being of students in Greece.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Gkouliama A
PROVIDER: S-EPMC8314986 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:Food contributes to an individual's physical and mental well-being and expresses one's cultural identity through preparation, sharing, and consumption (i.e., foodways). Inadequate access to cultural foods can create cultural stress and affect one's identity and well-being. In particular, second-generation U.S. American student populations may have a higher risk for cultural stress due to being away from family, academic stress, environmental changes, and diminished financial stability to purchase cultural foods. Thus, an exploratory qualitative methodology was used to elicit information about second-generation U.S. Americans' food experiences to identify how cultural foods play a role in individual identity and how individual well-being is influenced by the presence or lack of cultural foods. Sixteen semi-structured interviews were conducted with second-generation American students at the University of Nevada, Reno, who self-identified as a cultural or ethnic minority. A standard thematic analysis was conducted. The authors identified that cultural food security influenced the ability to practice foodways, which tied Second-generation American students to their cultural identities. The absence of foodways led to anxiety and depression among students, amplifying the feelings of identity degradation. Second-generation American students discussed that the ability to practice their foodways improved multiple well-being components and led to feelings of happiness, decreased stress, warmth, better digestion, and a sense of belonging, comfort, and safety. College populations continue to grow and become more diverse, and with the increasing Second-generation American students, it is essential to improve the access and availability of cultural foods to improve their overall well-being. (245/250 words).Supplementary informationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12571-020-01140-w.
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Project description:Bullying victimization among schoolchildren is a major public health concern. This paper aims to analyse the changing associations over two decades between bullying victimization and mental well-being in a representative Scottish schoolchildren sample.Data were collected in six rounds of the cross-sectional Health Behaviour in School-aged Children study in Scotland, with 42,312 adolescents (aged 11, 13 and 15 years). Logistic and linear regressions were used to examine changes in the association between bullying victimization and mental well-being.The prevalence of bullying victimization rates in Scotland increased between 1994 and 2014 for most age-gender groups, apart from 13-year-old boys and 15-year-old girls. Over time, female victims reported less confidence and happiness and more psychological complaints than their non-bullied counterparts. This worsening effect over time was not observed in boys.Overall, our evidence indicates that the associations between bullying victimization and poor mental well-being strengthened overtime for bullied girls. This finding might partly explain the observed deterioration in mental health indicators among Scottish adolescent girls.
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Project description:Schools are an essential part of students' lives and can promote and facilitate their well-being. Although research on well-being among school-aged children and adolescents has distinguished subjective well-being from social well-being, very few studies examined student's social well-being at school (SWS). SWS is understood as students' valuation of the circumstances and functioning of their school. This framework posits that the context of the schools can shape students' perception of feeling integrated and making significant contributions to their schools. However, not much is known regarding the joint contribution of individual, family, and school characteristics to students' SWS. This study analyzed these joint contributions in a nationally representative sample of 6,389 children and adolescents enrolled in 5th-11th grades. Findings show that being female and younger were individual predictors of SWS. Students' satisfaction with their family and fewer changes of schools were also significant contributors. When students' perceptions of their schools were incorporated, the individual and family characteristics decreased or lost significance. In the full model, the highest contribution to SWS was explained by the school-level aggregated perception of school climate. These findings call for integrated policies and practices to foster students' sense of belonging, feeling integrated, and contribution to their schools, with a focus on school-level interventions to improve SWS through positive and engaging school climates that foster students' sense of agency.
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Project description:The aim of this work is to investigate the factors promoting students' engagement at school and supporting their well-being experience. According to the Positive Education there is a strong relationship between school environment and student's well-being. Moreover, the quality of the school climate perceived by the students was found to influence engagement in school activities, as well. In this study, 153 students (M = 67) attending 10th grade were presented with tests and questionnaires to assess individual assets (personality traits, literacy skills), emerging appraisals (school-climate, well-being experience) and emerging actions (school engagement), according to the Student Well-Being Model. Path analysis showed that the best model does include neither individual assets nor direct effect of school climate on engagement, as the effect of school climate on engagement is mediated by well-being experience. The main result is that school climate has been confirmed as an important factor to be considered to improve engagement in school activities, but it is effective only when its influence can modify the well-being experience of the students. Moreover, the lack of significant effects of individual assets in the model suggests that improving school climate means to support well-being experience and, indirectly school engagement, irrespective to learning abilities and personality traits. This work encourages working in/with schools to implement positive education programs that support and sustain a positive school climate and culture for school-community wellbeing.
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Project description:OBJECTIVES:To investigate the state of the mental well-being of patients from ethnic minority groups and possible related risk factors for the development of mental health problems among these patients during critical medical situations in hospital. DESIGN:Qualitative ethnographic design. SETTING:Oneintensive care unit (ICU) of a multiethnic urban hospital in Belgium. PARTICIPANTS:84 ICU staff members, 10 patients from ethnic-minority groups and their visiting family members. RESULTS:Patients had several human basic needs for which they could not sufficiently turn to anybody, neither to their healthcare professionals, nor to their relatives nor to other patients. These needs included the need for social contact, the need to increase comfort and alleviate pain, the need to express desperation and participate in end-of-life decision making. Three interrelated risk factors for the development of mental health problems among the patients included were identified: First, healthcare professionals' mainly biomedical care approach (eg, focus on curing the patient, limited psychosocial support), second, the ICU context (eg, time pressure, uncertainty, regulatory frameworks) and third, patients' different ethnocultural background (eg, religious and phenotypical differences). CONCLUSIONS:The mental state of patients from ethnic minority groups during critical care is characterised by extreme emotional loneliness. It is important that staff should identify and meet patients' unique basic needs in good time with regard to their mental well-being, taking into account important threats related to their own mainly biomedical approach to care, the ICU's structural context as well as the patients' different ethnocultural background.
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Project description:One-thousand-one-hundred-and-ninety-one school counselors completed an online survey regarding advocacy for and with gender minority students comprising transgender and intersex students (school counselor gender minority advocacy competence). School counselors completed a battery of three competency-based assessments to assess their levels of gender identity counselor competence, intersex counselor competence, and school counselor gender minority advocacy competence. They also completed a demographic form so that competency levels could be examined with demographic variables. Attitudes, school level placement, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity counselor competence, and intersex counselor competence were significantly related to advocacy for and with gender minority students. These findings have implications for the application of identity behavior theory to examine the experiences and behaviors of minoritized individuals and those who advocate for them. These advocates include school counselors and other helping professionals who work with gender minority students.
| S-EPMC7968657 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The purpose of this study is to map the literature on mental health and well-being of university students using metadata extracted from 5,561 journal articles indexed in the Web of Science database for the period 1975-2020. More specifically, this study uses bibliometric procedures to describe and visually represent the available literature on mental health and well-being in university students in terms of the growth trajectory, productivity, social structure, intellectual structure, and conceptual structure of the field over 45 years. Key findings of the study are that research on mental health and well-being in university students: (a) has experienced a steady growth over the last decades, especially since 2010; (b) is disseminated in a wide range of journals, mainly in the fields of psychology, psychiatry, and education research; (c) is published by scholars with diverse geographical background, although more than half of the publications are produced in the United States; (d) lies on a fragmented research community composed by multiple research groups with little interactions between them; (e) is relatively interdisciplinary and emerges from the convergence of research conducted in the behavioral and biomedical sciences; (f) tends to emphasize pathogenic approaches to mental health (i.e., mental illness); and (g) has mainly addressed seven research topics over the last 45 years: positive mental health, mental disorders, substance abuse, counseling, stigma, stress, and mental health measurement. The findings are discussed, and the implications for the future development of the field are highlighted.
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Project description:Background:Children in modern society are exposed to high levels of stress. Various previous studies have reported that horticultural activities help children's emotional stability. The objective of this study is to develop and implement a horticultural therapy program to improve the emotional intelligence, resilience, and self-efficacy of elementary school students. Methods:A total of 582 Korean students (11-13 years old) from 28 schools participated in this study. The horticultural therapy program consisted of seven sessions and was conducted once a week for 60?min per session, during regular or after-school classes. Before and after the horticultural therapy program, emotional intelligence, resilience, and self-efficacy of the elementary school students were assessed using questionnaires. At the end of the program, students evaluated their satisfaction with the program. Results:The horticultural therapy program significantly improved emotional intelligence (p?=?0.000), resilience (p?=?0.001), and self-efficacy (p?=?0.003) of the elementary students participating in this study. After the program, emotional intelligence improved both male and female students. In resilience and self-efficacy, male students improved after the program, but female students did not. Conclusions:This study may show a potential of horticultural therapy for psycho-emotional health of children.
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Project description:The period of early adolescence is characterized by dramatic changes, simultaneously affecting physiological, psychological, social, and cognitive development. The physical transition from elementary to middle school can exacerbate the stress and adversity experienced during this critical life stage. Middle school students often struggle to find social and emotional support, and many students experience a decreased sense of belonging in school, diverting students from promising academic and career trajectories. Drawing on psychological insights for promoting belonging, we fielded a brief intervention designed to help students reappraise concerns about fitting in at the start of middle school as both temporary and normal. We conducted a district-wide double-blind experimental study of this approach with middle school students (n = 1,304). Compared with the control condition activities, the intervention reduced sixth-grade disciplinary incidents across the district by 34%, increased attendance by 12%, and reduced the number of failing grades by 18%. Differences in benefits across demographic groups were not statistically significant, but some impacts were descriptively larger for historically underserved minority students and boys. A mediational analysis suggested 80% of long-term intervention effects on students' grade point averages were accounted for by changes in students' attitudes and behaviors. These results demonstrate the long-term benefits of psychologically reappraising stressful experiences during critical transitions and the psychological and behavioral mechanisms that support them. Furthermore, this brief intervention is a highly cost-effective and scalable approach that schools may use to help address the troubling decline in positive attitudes and academic outcomes typically accompanying adolescence and the middle school transition.
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Project description:Research is lacking on psychological distress and disorder among sexual minority medical students (students who identify as nonheterosexual). If left unaddressed, distress may result in academic and professional difficulties and undermine workforce diversity goals. The authors compared depression, anxiety, and self-rated health among sexual minority and heterosexual medical students.This study included 4,673 first-year students who self-reported sexual orientation in the fall 2010 baseline survey of the Medical Student Cognitive Habits and Growth Evaluation Study, a national longitudinal cohort study. The authors used items from published scales to measure depression, anxiety, self-rated health, and social stressors. They conducted bivariate and multivariate analyses to estimate the association between sexual identity and depression, anxiety, and self-rated health.Of 4,673 students, 232 (5.0%) identified as a sexual minority. Compared with heterosexual students, after adjusting for relevant covariates, sexual minority students had greater risk of depressive symptoms (adjusted relative risk [ARR] = 1.59 [95% confidence interval, 1.24-2.04]), anxiety symptoms (ARR = 1.64 [1.08-2.49]), and low self-rated health (ARR = 1.77 [1.15-2.60]). Sexual minority students were more likely to report social stressors, including harassment (22.7% versus 12.7%, P < .001) and isolation (53.7% versus 42.8%, P = .001). Exposure to social stressors attenuated but did not eliminate the observed associations between minority sexual identity and mental and self-reported health measures.First-year sexual minority students experience significantly greater risk of depression, anxiety, and low self-rated health than heterosexual students. Targeted interventions are needed to improve mental health and well-being.
| S-EPMC4414698 | biostudies-literature