Subjective health complaints in early adolescence reflect stress: A study among adolescents in Western Sweden

Maria Corell · Peter Friberg · Petra Löfstedt · Max Petzold · Yun Chen

51 citations0/0 files storedScandinavian Journal of Public Health

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development Student Stress and Coping Psychology and Mental Health

Abstract

Aims: Mental health problems are common among Swedish adolescents and are sometimes referred to as ‘stress-related’. The overall aim of this study is to do an analysis of subjective health complaints (SHCs) and perceived general stress among adolescents in Sweden, both their prevalence and association, by gender, migration background, family structure and socioeconomic conditions. Methods: Data from the baseline (comprising 2283 adolescents aged 13) of the STudy of Adolescence Resilience and Stress (STARS) study in Västra Götaland in Sweden were used. SHCs were measured by the Psychosomatic Problems Scale (PSP-scale) and self-reported stress was measured by Cohen’s Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10). Socioeconomic conditions were measured with the Family Affluence Scale (FAS) and the MacArthur Scale of Subjective Social Status (SSS). Statistical analyses included Student’s t-tests and ANOVAs of means, linear and logistic regression analyses and Pearson’s correlations. Results: Social inequalities in both SHCs and self-reported stress were found; levels were higher among girls, adolescents living with one parent or in families with less favourable socioeconomic conditions. Self-reported stress and SHCs were found to be strongly correlated ( r=0.70). Correlations with self-reported stress were stronger for psychological complaints ( r=0.71) than for somatic complaints ( r=0.52). Correlations did not vary with socioeconomic conditions of the family. Conclusions: SHCs do reflect general stress among adolescents, and it is appropriate to address the complaints as ‘stress-related’. Measures to improve adolescents’ mental health by reducing levels of SHCs should pay special attention to stressors in adolescents’ daily lives and strengthening adolescent’s coping resources and strategies.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 51 citations exist upstream.

References

1983A Global Measure of Perceived Stress 1985Stress, appraisal, and coping 1981The Stress Process 2001Adolescents' Perceptions of Social Status: Development and Evaluation of a New Indicator 2014Are child and adolescent mental health problems increasing in the 21st century? A systematic review 2014Annual Research Review: Secular trends in child and adolescent mental health 2015Psychometric Validation of the Revised Family Affluence Scale: a Latent Variable Approach 2012Subjective health complaints in older adolescents are related to perceived stress, anxiety and gender – a cross-sectional school study in Northern Sweden

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.