Adolescent Research Review最新文献

Emotion regulation is a powerful predictor of youth mental health and a crucial ingredient of interventions. A growing body of evidence indicates that the beliefs individuals hold about the extent to which emotions are controllable (emotion controllability beliefs) influence both the degree and the ways in which they regulate emotions. A systematic review was conducted that investigated the associations between emotion controllability beliefs and youth anxiety and depression symptoms. The search identified 21 peer-reviewed publications that met the inclusion criteria. Believing that emotions are relatively controllable was associated with fewer anxiety and depression symptoms, in part because these beliefs were associated with more frequent use of adaptive emotion regulation strategies. These findings support theoretical models linking emotion controllability beliefs with anxiety and depression symptoms via emotion regulation strategies that target emotional experience, like reappraisal. Taken together, the review findings demonstrate that emotion controllability beliefs matter for youth mental health. Understanding emotion controllability beliefs is of prime importance for basic science and practice, as it will advance understanding of mental health and provide additional targets for managing symptoms of anxiety and depression in young people.

Disadvantaged adolescents such as those of low socioeconomic and geographically remote backgrounds experience disproportionate chronic disease burden and tend to engage in greater risk behaviors including poor diet, alcohol use, tobacco smoking, and vaping. The social, structural, and economical barriers to health that uniquely affect adolescents of low socioeconomic and geographically remote backgrounds, such as stigma, access to and affordability of services, may partially explain their disadvantage in attaining health equity. Universal eHealth interventions can provide effective prevention, however, it is unclear whether they benefit disadvantaged adolescents, including those from low socioeconomic and geographically remote contexts. This study systematically reviewed the effectiveness of eHealth interventions targeting disadvantaged adolescents in preventing poor diet, alcohol use, tobacco smoking and vaping. Of 3278 identified records, 15 publications assessing 14 interventions were included, comprising 7170 youth (aged 9–18 years, 50.1% female, 56% low-mid SES, 33% remote). Nine interventions targeted poor diet, three targeted alcohol, one targeted tobacco, and one targeted alcohol and tobacco. No interventions targeted vaping. eHealth interventions significantly increased fruit and vegetable intake and percentage energy of nutrient-rich food, decreased sugar-sweetened beverage consumption, total energy intake, nutrient-poor food percentage energy consumption, and were associated with reduced binge drinking at 1-month follow-up among intervention completers. The findings of this study highlight that eHealth interventions can be effective in targeting poor diet and alcohol use among disadvantaged adolescents. However, due to the limited number of studies meeting inclusion criteria for this study, it is critical future research focus on developing and evaluating effective eHealth interventions targeting disadvantaged adolescents.

Youth have experienced an increase in mental health concerns and can be challenging to work with using traditional talk-based prevention and treatment options. This meta-analysis aimed to synthesize existing studies on the effectiveness of equine-assisted interventions with youth for psychosocial outcomes, such as internalizing and externalizing problems, adaptive efficacy, self-esteem, and depressive symptoms. Search and selection procedures involved screening 3525 records to yield 16 controlled studies published between 2009 and 2021 with 1009 participants. The results showed a statistically significant, homogenous, and medium effect for the overall effectiveness of equine interventions for improving overall psychosocial outcomes for youth (n = 16, d = .535, 95% CI [.345, .726], p < .001, I² = 0.39). The results also showed similar statistically significant effects for externalizing problems, internalizing problems, and adaptive efficacy. However, the effectiveness of equine-assisted interventions for the self-esteem and depressive symptoms (when measured separately from internalizing problems) of youth was statistically non-significant. For self-esteem, the effects were heterogeneous, suggesting the studies may not be measuring the same effect. Future research on equine-assisted interventions for the mental health of youth should utilize designs with larger sample sizes, randomization and/or clear equivalence of comparison groups, a credible comparison treatment, complete and analyzable follow-up measurements, and adequate statistical analyses and reporting.

Youth sociopolitical action, which encompasses a broad range of behaviors to dismantle systems of oppression, is increasingly taking place on social media and digital platforms. This study presents the development and validation of a 15-item Sociopolitical Action Scale for Social Media (SASSM) through three sequential studies: in Study I, a scale was developed based on interviews with 20 young digital activists (M_age=19, 35% cis-gender women, 90% youth of color). In Study II, Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) identified a unidimensional scale using a sample of 809 youth (M_age=17, 55.7% cis-gender women, 60.1% youth of color). In Study III, an EFA and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) were used to confirm the factor structure of a slightly modified set of items with a new sample of 820 youth (M_age=17, 45.9% cis-gender women, 53.9% youth of color). Measurement invariance testing was conducted by age, gender, racial and ethnic background, and immigrant identity, confirming full configural and metric invariance, and full or partial scalar invariance. The SASSM can further research on youths’ efforts to challenge oppression and injustice online.

Relational aggression is defined as harming peers’ relationships through exclusion, rumors, and manipulation. Seminal work on adolescent relational aggression has documented its prevalence across diverse cultural settings. However, efforts to investigate the impact of cultural norms on relational aggression are limited. The purpose of the present review is to present the existing research on relational aggression across cultures during adolescence, a developmental period where the importance of peer relations peaks. Emphasis was placed on gender differences in relational aggression cross-culturally. A systematic literature search between 2010 and 2022 yielded 76 published studies, classified according to studies’ characteristics (participants, information source, study’s design), gender differences and relational aggression’s prevalence. Adolescents in European and American countries reported low scores on relational aggression, while the majority of the studies that were conducted in Asia indicated higher engagement in relational aggression. In Africa and Australia, the findings were inconclusive regarding the prevalence of relational aggression. One third of the studies found non-significant gender differences in adolescent relational aggression. The majority of the studies in Africa, Asia, Australia, and Europe showed that males scored higher on relational aggression, while in America most of the research demonstrated higher scores for females. Future comparative research on relational aggression during adolescence across cultures is suggested.

Cyberbullying and psychoactive substance use are two common risky behaviors among adolescents, and a growing body of documents observe associations between these two phenomena. The present systematic review aims to clarify this association, analyzing the use of both legal and illegal psychoactive substances and all cyberbullying roles. To this purpose, a systematic search on PubMed, Scopus and PsycInfo databases was conducted, focusing on adolescents aged between 10 and 20 years old. The review was carried out following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines, and it includes a total of fifty original articles. The majority of them observed a positive association between cyberbullying involvement and the use of psychoactive substances, especially tobacco and alcohol. Regarding moderator factors, some studies observed the aforementioned association only among girls. Moreover, controlling for gender, delinquent friends and low parental support, this association became not significant. Nevertheless, there was a lack of information about the role of those who witnessed cyberbullying, and the included articles showed mixed results regarding illegal substance use. The findings highlighted the need for further research in order to better clarify the association between cyberbullying and substance use, and equally explore all cyberbullying roles and substance types.

While discussion of religiosity and delinquency has garnered attention in the past few decades, few studies have focused on how religiosity influences rates of delinquency among Muslim adolescents. In this systematic review, keywords were used to cull pertinent articles from two major databases (Scopus and EBSCOhost). In total, 14 articles were identified based on several inclusion criteria. In general, the studies selected showed that Muslim adolescents have a lower rate of delinquency compared to non-Muslim adolescents. However, when questions related to the measurement of delinquency (such as including violence) and the cultural context (such as including individuals who are first-generation immigrants of a non-Muslim-majority country) are taken into consideration, more complex trends are observed. Furthermore, many identified articles did not capture the essence of Muslim religiosity as conceptualized by some Muslim researchers, which has specific and unique properties that must be considered. This study demonstrates how Muslim religiosity protects against delinquency and has a potential use for intervention with Muslim adolescents.

The increasing prevalence of problematic internet use has heightened concerns about its adverse impact on internet users’ mental health. Despite reviews investigating the associations between problematic internet use and mental health outcomes, there is a lack of understanding of various aspects of students’ mental health. This study aimed to bridge this gap by providing a more comprehensive overall picture of this issue through a quantitative synthesis based on three-level random-effects meta-analytic models. In total, 223 studies with a cumulative total of 498,167 participants and 512 effect sizes were included in this synthesis. The results showed that problematic internet use was moderately and positively associated with depressive symptoms, anxiety, loneliness, and other mental health outcomes, and negatively related to subjective well-being. Moderator analyses revealed that several study features (i.e., school grade, region, measure of problematic internet use, publication year, and gender) could explain the variations in the findings across individual studies. These research results provide solid evidence for the link between problematic internet use and different mental health outcomes and have implications for future research and interventions on students’ problematic internet use.

Dramatic changes in sleep duration, schedules, and quality put adolescents at higher risk of negative outcomes, such as poorer physical and psychosocial adjustment. While significant attention has been paid to the role of proximal contexts (e.g., family), less is known about the longitudinal interplay between exo- (e.g., neighborhood characteristics) and macro-contextual (e.g., ethnic/racial discrimination) influences and adolescents’ sleep quality. Therefore, this review aimed to summarize findings from available longitudinal research to understand the role of structural factors and experiences in the distal contexts of development in influencing sleep quality in adolescence. A total of 10 studies were included in this systematic review. The results highlighted the detrimental consequences of structural factors and experiences at the exo- and macro-systems for adolescents’ sleep duration, quality, and disturbances. Specifically, neighborhood economic deprivation, ethnic/racial minority status, community violence and victimization, and ethnic/racial discrimination were all linked to significantly lower sleep quality. Overall, this review highlighted the need for more longitudinal and multi-method studies addressing sleep quality as embedded in contexts and the reciprocal influences among the multiple layers of adolescents’ development.

Causal attributions and help-seeking is not well explored among adolescents, despite evidence of perceived causes for difficulties influencing how adults engage with treatment and seek help. This study reviewed extant literature to understand what adolescents at increased risk of developing mental health difficulties and those with clinically significant symptoms perceive to be the cause of emotional distress; to determine the extent to which perceived cause influences help-seeking; and to identify potential differences/commonalities between these groups. A systematic review and qualitative thematic synthesis were conducted. 3,691 articles were identified, 18 were eligible to be included and were synthesized using thematic synthesis. Six main themes related to perceived cause are reported. Three of those themes were shared between the clinical and at-risk groups: (1) challenging social factors and perceived difference, (2) problematic family dynamics, and (3) cause is complex and multifaceted. Three themes were not: (4) unfairness and perceived lack of agency and (5) concern for self and others, were exclusive to the at-risk group, and (6) coping with a mental health difficulty was exclusive to the clinical group. Four main themes related to causal attributions and help-seeking were found, including: (1) cause and implications for self-preservation; (2) the degree of personal and wider knowledge and understanding of cause; (3) perceived extent of control in managing cause; and (4) cause having potential to affect others. The findings of this review demonstrate that perceived cause for emotional distress plays a role in help-seeking among adolescent groups and highlights likely differences in how adolescents at-risk of mental health difficulties and those with clinically significant symptoms attribute cause for their difficulties and subsequently seek help. This has important implications for how to support young people experiencing or at risk of mental health difficulties and presents a strong case for pursuing more research in this area.