Browsing by Subject "adolescents"

Goals: The goal of this study was to find out how social support from different sources (family, friends and significant other) is connected with depressive symptoms among adolescents and young adults. It was also investigated whether the significance of different sources of support changes as the adolescents mature. Depression is one of the most common mental health disorder in the world. Its incidence rises sharply after puberty and, if left untreated, it can have serious consequences for the wellbeing, health and development of adolescents. A number of previous studies have shown that social support is inversely connected with depressive symptoms in all ages and social contexts. Most studies of social support have used assessment instruments measuring perceived social support, which is an individual's cognitive appraisals of the availability of support in times of need. Social support can enhance mental health by buffering the negative effects of stressful life events or by having direct positive effects on well-being. According to Bronfenbrenner's ecological system's theory, the development of adolescents was examined in the context of their changing social networks. Adolescents usually receive support from multiple sources. Most of them maintain good relationships with their parents across the young age. However, when adolescents become more independent from their parents, relationships with friends and significant others usually become closer and more important. Methods: The data was from the national Young Finns Study psychology part conducted in 1992 and 1997. In 1992, there were 2330 participants who were 15-30 years old. Thus, in 1997 the participants were 20-35 years old. There were 1678 participants who answered questionnaires both in 1992 and in 1997. The data was analyzed using one-way variance analysis and linear regression. Results and conclusions: The participants perceived quite a lot of social support. The youngest group (15-18 years old) received less support from friends and significant others than their older counterparts. However, the level of family support was equal in all age groups. Support from both family and friends was inversely connected with depressive symptoms: the more the participant received social support, the fewer depressive symptoms she/he had. However, support from the significant other was not connected with depressive symptoms. The connection between social support from different sources and depressive symptoms was similar across different age groups. In five years follow-up, social support was only slightly connected with depressive symptoms. The connection was stronger in women than in men, but the differences were small. In order to tackle depression, it is important for adolescents to receive enough support from their families and also have positive peer relations in addition to the family social environment

Background The revised, consent-based legislation on sexual offences entered into force in Finland 1.1.2023. The change in legislation may affect how adolescents self-label their sexual experiences. By exploring what adolescents think of consent, professionals can better understand their sexual experiences and potentially facilitate the disclosure of child sexual abuse. While there is a vast amount of international research on consent, the attitudes of Finnish adolescents remain unknown. Additionally, professionals can help adolescents disclose by improving investigative interviewing. The present study aimed to explore what adolescents think of consent and what wishes they have for investigative interviews. Methods 160 Finnish adolescents from 14 to 18 years old (51.97 % women, 36.18 % men) answered an online survey that was created for the purpose of this study. The survey had 32 questions: seventeen related to consent, eight to interviews and seven to background variables. The final sample had 152 participants and the results were analyzed qualitatively and statistically using nonparametric tests and ordinal regressions. Results 92.11 % of the participants thought they knew what consent meant. Most had heard of consent on the internet or in school. The participants also wanted information on consent from the same sources. Adolescents thought that consent should be communicated explicitly and verbally. Nonetheless, most participants answered that both characters in vignettes had an equal opportunity to give consent despite the lack of explicit and verbal consent cues. Regret, alcohol intoxication, pressure from a partner and age difference affected consent perceptions. Most participants evaluated that the vignette characters didn’t have an equal opportunity to give consent with a three-year age gap and even fewer thought so as the age difference grew. Consent perceptions did not vary by participant age or gender, vignette target age or gender, vignette agent gender or whether the vignette target and agent were same-sex or not. Most participants preferred face-to-face interview to tele-forensic interview but most importantly, the participants wanted to decide that for themselves. The participants wanted to be interviewed at a police station or at social services without a support person. Before the interview, the participants wanted to know that who is going to interview them and what happens to them after the interview. The participants wished for a safe and calm space to talk about their experiences to a person that listens to them and gives them as much information as possible. Conclusions According to this study, adolescents’ views on consents differ when discussed in theory and while evaluating vignettes. The results are in congruence with previous research. Regret, alcohol intoxication, pressure from a partner and age difference affect adolescents’ consent perceptions. The wishes for investigative interviews implicate that access to someone you can trust and expecting others to believe you can facilitate disclosure. Interview policies can be improved by further research, which may lead to better and safer investigations at best.

Previous research has linked music training to enhanced processing of unattended auditory stimuli as indexed by such auditory event-related potential (ERP) responses as mismatch negativity (MMN) and P3a. Music training has also been linked with enhanced cognitive abilities more generally, and executive functions have been proposed to mediate this link. The current study concentrates on the processing of unattended auditory stimuli and how this relates to two aspects of executive functions: task-switching and inhibition. Sixty-seven music trained (music group) and non-trained (control group) adolescents and young adults were split into age groups, 14–16 year olds (younger) and 17–20 year olds (older), and compared in their performance on inhibition and task-switching task as well as the neural processing of unattended auditory stimuli. The ERPs were recorded in response to an oddball paradigm consisting of frequent major and infrequent minor chords. The music group demonstrated larger MMN and P3a amplitudes than the control group during the chord paradigm. The younger music group showed better performance in an inhibition task than the younger control group. However, no other differences in task performance were found between the groups. Also, no link between MMN or P3a and task performance was found. Therefore, the results of the current study are in line with the previous findings that music training is linked to enhanced early neural processing of unattended auditory stimuli. However, the results were partly in disagreement with previous reports of enhanced executive functions in musicians as a link between executive functions and music training was only observed in the younger participants, and only in regard to the inhibition task.

Aims. Human sleep is influenced by several biological and environmental factors. Furthermore, day-time experiences and emotion-related processes are likely to impact the subsequent sleep. However, it has been suggested that emotions may not have a direct impact on the quality or duration of sleep, but emotion regulation may have a noteworthy part in between. The aim of the present study is to investigate the effect of cognitive emotion regulation strategies on objectively measured sleep in adolescents. Ten distinct cognitive emotion regulation strategies and their association on sleep duration, sleep quality, regularity, and the timing of sleep phase was examined. The possible links between theoretically adaptive and maladaptive strategies and sleep were investigated as well. Methods. Sleep and cognitive emotion regulation strategies of 329 adolescents (67.1% girls, age M=17.47) were measured in SleepHelsinki!, a University of Helsinki –based research project. Sleep was measured objectively with actigraphy. Regression analyses were performed between distinct emotion regulation strategies and sleep outcomes, and between two composite variables (adaptive and maladaptive strategies) and sleep outcomes. Results and Conclusions. The average sleep duration of adolescents was 6.55 hours on weekdays and 7.41 hours on weekends, which is considerably less that the recommended 8-10 hours. A clear link between emotion regulation strategies and the timing of the sleep phase was found. The overall use of adaptive strategies as well as the use of distinct adaptive strategies was related to an earlier midpoint of the sleep phase on weekdays. Furthermore, the more rumination and catastrophizing were used, the later the sleep midpoint occurred. However, the link between emotion regulation strategies and duration, quality and regularity of sleep remains elusive. The results obtained in the present study suggest that the usage of various emotion regulation strategies is connected to the timing of nighttime sleep, particularly on weekdays. Sufficient emotion regulation is likely necessary for good nighttime sleep, but the adaptivity of the strategy may depend on complex person-, situation- or emotion-related matters.

This thesis has focused on Afro-Peruvian adolescents’ perceptions on education and future in the context of the poor and violent urban neighbourhood of La Victoria, Lima. The objectives of the study were to find out how the subjective experiences of the adolescents and their thoughts on social reality are directing the formation of values and practises and what factors affect their views, actions and decision-making. The study is based on 13 semi-structured interviews with the adolescents. In addition I have used participant observation, background interviews, lectures and seminars to complement my data. As a theoretical framework I applied Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus and capitals combined with intersectionality – a concept borrowed from feminist studies that allowed me to look for relationships and differences of race, class, ethnicity and gender, and to explore the interconnections between different factors that can be found in the background of the adolescents’ decision-making processes. The factors producing inequalities in La Victoria are multiple. In the context of the study, poverty and social class have more significance for the adolescents than ethnicity. Poverty can be seen both as a concrete and a structural obstacle, whereas ethnicity is more structural and therefore invisible. Through habitus one learns to make choices that appear obvious, although they have been learned socially and culturally. Therefore, social structures become visible through people’s individual choices and actions. Poverty among the adolescents appears as socio-cultural poverty that places them in a marginal. It limits their possibilities to access capitals and to make adequate choices and decisions regarding their life and future. In many of the cases poverty can be seen as reproduction of a certain culture, a set of assumed values, attitudes and forms of behaviour that create a lifestyle ruled by maintaining survival strategies. The interviews demonstrate that the adolescents’ perceptions about education and future opportunities are constructed on the basis of multiple interconnections between social class, ethnicity, age and place. In their perceptions, class and place seem to be important producers of power that limit the possibilities to act and make decisions regarding education. The general attitude of the adolescents and the tone of voice remain fairly positive. However, it can be concluded that there is a big contrast between dreams, speech and actions. The adolescents believed to have better opportunities than their parents, but did not always transform this attitude into concrete actions. They recognised the adverse aspects of the socio-economic context, but thought that their will and motivation were exceeding them.