Promoting mental health and healthy behaviors in adolescents

abstract

A high percentage of adolescents suffer from mental health problems and many health-risk behaviors, such as excessive alcohol consumption, cigarette smoking, and drug (mis)use, are acquired during adolescence. These mental health problems and health-risk behaviors often persist into adulthood, thereby affecting not only current health but also health later in life. Given the adverse short and long term effects of adolescents’ mental health problems and health-risk behaviors, these problems and behaviors are major public health concerns. Insight in factors associated with mental health problems and risk behaviors is needed in order to develop strategies to identify adolescents at risk of these problems and behaviors, and to develop effective interventions to improve adolescents’ health and behaviors. Therefore, the first aim of this thesis was to examine factors associated with mental health problems and health-risk behaviors. The second aim was to evaluate three interventions aiming to identify adolescents’ at risk of mental health problems and health-risk behaviors, and to promote adolescents’ mental health and healthy behaviors. Third, the psychometric properties of the self-report questionnaire assessing self-sufficiency and the Dutch version of the Self-Sufficiency Matrix (SSM-D), both instruments to evaluate adolescent’s levels of self-sufficiency on various domains, were examined among adolescents attending senior vocational education.