Browsing by Subject "adolescence"

Aims of the study. Earlier studies focusing on diagnosed autism spectrum disorders have found high prevalence of sleep problems and other psychiatric disorders among adolescents. Moreover, subclinical variation of autistic traits has been shown to be associated with social deficits and psychiatric symptoms. However, little is known about the possible connection between subclinical autistic traits and sleep. This study explores whether adolescents with elevated levels of subclinical autistic traits are at heightened risk for sleep problems. Methods. This study used follow-up data from the GLAKU (Glycyrrhizin in Licorice) cohort study. The sample consisted of 157 (57% girls) 17-year-old adolescents. Autistic traits were assessed using the Autism Spectrum Quotient. The Beck Anxiety Inventory, Beck Depression Inventory and Adult ADHD Self-Report Scale were utilized to control for comorbid psychiatric symptoms. Sleep was measured using actigraphs. Associations between autistic traits and sleep were examined using logistic regression analysis. Results and conclusions. Elevated levels of autistic traits were significantly associated with shorter weekday sleep duration. Moreover, autistic traits remained as an independent predictor of short sleep duration when comorbid psychiatric symptoms were controlled for. Risk for short sleep duration was more pronounced among boys. The results suggest that subclinical autistic traits should be considered as a possible underlying mechanism affecting adolescent sleep.

Aims of the study. The aim of this study was to examine normative development of sleep patterns and circadian rhythmicity during adolescence. Previous studies have found that sleep duration shortens across the lifespan, and especially adolescents’ sleep timing shifts later due to physiological and psychological factors. Sleep patterns in adolescence are connected to individual’s endogenous circadian rhythms, usually measured by delayed melatonin secretion in the evening. There is a lack of understanding how sleep patterns are related to circadian body temperature rhythms during adolescence. Methods. This study was part of SleepHelsinki! cohort study of the Sleep & Mind Research Group. Adolescents’ sleep patterns were measured with actigraphies, whereas circadian body temperature was measured from the skin surface. Circadian temperature rhythmicity was inspected by circadian period length, the mesor of skin surface temperature and the amplitude of daily changes within the rhythm. Baseline measurements were measured from 215 (71.6 % girls) adolescents aged 16–18 years. At one-year follow-up, 156 (76.3 % girls) adolescents were measured again. Mixed models for repeated measures were used to examine changes over the year in sleep patterns and endogenous circadian temperature rhythm, separately for both girls and boys. Sex differences were tested with one-way variance analysis. Linear and ordinal regressions were used to predict sleep and circadian rhythm over the year. Results and conclusions. Over the year, adolescents’ sleep duration became longer during the week, while weekend sleep shortened. However, this change was only significant for girls. Sleep schedule became more delayed for both girls and boys during the week, as sleep onset, midpoint and offset occurred at a later time. Circadian rhythm changed for boys, as their average skin surface temperature increased, and their circadian temperature amplitude became smaller. Boys also had significantly lower circadian temperature amplitude than girls at the follow-up. Compared to boys, girls were 5.85 times more likely to have a high circadian temperature amplitude at the follow-up measurement. Changes in sleep length during the week was moderated by temperature amplitude, with higher circadian amplitude predicting sleep duration to become longer. Still, the likelihood to have long sleep duration was affected by past sleep duration.

This thesis answers to a question “Why adolescent girls drop out of school in Northern Uganda?” In Uganda, approximately 70% of the children drop out of public school before 7th grade, the final year of primary school. In northern Uganda, girls drop out of school in more significant numbers than boys, and it happens around the age when girls reach puberty. Northern Uganda is also a particular location because it is recovering from long conflict, affecting strongly the whole population living in the area. The thesis is based on two-month ethnographic fieldwork in northern Uganda during the spring of 2015. To answer the main research question this study seeks to analyse it through taking a look how the school, the community and the girls themselves experience and talk about dropping out, education and growing up in the current post-conflict state of the social life. The thesis argues that the dropout rate is linked to the adolescence as life-stage of becoming an adult that is making the girls to make decisions about the future. The analysis is done through three different perspectives – the educational, societal and personal narratives of the youth. The first perspective is the education and schooling in northern Uganda. It explores the concept of ’educated person’ by Levinson and Holland through sexual education and gender in education. The study shows that Ugandan public primary and secondary education is deriving its ideas and understanding of educated person from the national curriculum, which often conflict with the local concepts of the educated person in the Acholi community, influencing the blamed and real reasons for dropping out. The second perspective looks into the community and the societal pressures the girls are facing when growing up. It will describe family, kinship, marriage and gender in post-conflict context and show how in these areas of life, the past conflict, “loss of culture”, generational conflicts and subsequent disobedience are presented as reasons behind the challenges to stay in school. The third perspective tells the stories of the girls met and talked to during the ethnographic fieldwork in Northern Uganda. It answers the question “What is happening in the life of a girl when she drops out of school?”. It is argued that the girls take actions of a gendered agency to further their lives and become adults. Thus, dropping out of school cannot just be explained as a simple event just suddenly happening without their own will. It will further answer the question “What makes some girls stay in school?” to show how those girls still in school manage the crosscurrents of growing up in Acholiland. The thesis argues that the girls in northern Uganda are active appropriators and social agents who through their own actions contest, struggle and penetrate the structures in their society while also at the same time reproduce them. In Northern Uganda, both the community and the state together with different international agencies will have plans and expectations for the girls’ future. The study shows how the girls navigate the school, community and peer expectations and sociocultural and economic structures to stay or finally drop out of school. These structures are state organised and aid-infused formal schooling and society in amidst of post-conflict recovery which creates a framework where the girls are acting. The school presents the modern and globally orientated educated person, and in contrast to it, the community is looking for to restore ‘traditional’ way of life. It is argued that these two sides are often in conflict and in the middle of this conflict the girls act and solve their way out of it, looking for adulthood and gaining respectable status in the society. The schools, the community and even sometimes the development actors see the girls as passively following the things they will encounter. The thesis will show that they are not. The girls either stay in school or drop out of it, but more often as a consequence of their own decisions and actions than passively because the school or the community could not support them. It is demonstrated that dropping out of school looks more of line a tactic for the future as a respectable grown-up than mere problem to be solved.

Objectives. Attachment theory is a theory of social development and personality, known around the world. According to the theory, children have an innate tendency to develop a biologically based and central nervous system-regulated attachment bond to their primary caregivers in order to ensure safety, care, and survival. Early attachment experiences contribute to the way one sees oneself and others and lead to secure, insecure, or disorganized attachment styles, which affect rest of one’s life. Previous research has confirmed the universal nature of attachment, different attachment categories and styles, and early attachment’s links with future relationships and various internal and external problems. Attachment research has traditionally concentrated on early childhood and early childhood environments, whereas middle childhood, adolescence, and school context have been studied less. The objectives of the present study were to find out what kinds of links there are between attachment and the lives of school-aged children and youngsters, what kinds of attachment-related challenges teachers encounter at school, and how teachers could support their students with those attachment-related challenges. The aim is to explore attachment in the lives of school-aged children and youngsters, including at school, to gain a better understanding and to create a valuable foundation for future research. Methodology. The present study was conducted as a systematic literature review, which allowed the gathering of diverse and comprehensive, yet relevant research material, while also supporting objectivity and reproducibility aspects of the study. The material, available through electronic databases, was comprised of research articles from around the world, published in peer-reviewed international research journals. The material was analyzed thematically by research questions and topics, which were then used as a framework in the Results section. Results and conclusions. Early attachment and attachment styles were directly and indirectly linked to the lives of school-aged children and youngsters, including teacher-student relationships, peer relationships, family relationships, and academic achievement, as well as internal and external problems. Various attachment-related challenges and problems were visible at school, but teachers had many ways to buffer them. Current attachment research has not affected or changed school environments enough. Much more attention should be given to attachment within schools, teacher education, and in-service training programs in order to give students better support for their attachment-related problems and challenges.

Objective: Obesity and poor mental health frequently co-occur in adulthood, but their comorbidity and causality during adolescence remain less explored. This study aimed to investigate how symptoms of depression, symptoms of anxiety, self-esteem, and psychological resilience associate to physical growth in Finnish youth. Methods: This study included 1,286 on average 11.2-year-old children (51% girls) from the Finnish Health in Teens (Fin-HIT) cohort study, of which 814 were followed for an average of 4.3 years. Symptoms of depression and symptoms of anxiety were evaluated with Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale for Children (CES-DC) and Screen for Child Anxiety-Related Emotional Disorders (SCARED) at the age of 11. Self-esteem was assessed with Self-Perception Profile for Children (SPPC) at the age of 11. Baseline categorical psychological resilience was cross-classified into four phenotypes based on combination of exposure to early stressful life events (SLEs), assessed with Life Events as Stressors in Childhood and Adolescence, and psychological health, assessed with CES-DC and/or SCARED and SPPC. Weight, height, and waist circumference were self-reported at ages 11 and 15. Sex- and age-specific BMIz was calculated based on IOTF guidelines, and WtHr as waist circumference divided by height. Linear regression models were used to examine the associations between mental health indicators and BMIz/WtHr, while multilevel modeling was used to examine how the mental health indicators associate with change in BMIz/WtHr during the follow-up period. Results: Higher depressive symptoms were associated with a higher WtHr at baseline (p = .001) and a decrease in BMIz (p = .02) and WtHr (p = .001) over the follow-up period. Symptoms of anxiety were associated with a higher WtHr at baseline (p = .017) and a decrease in BMIz (p = .035), and after adjusting for age and sex also with a decrease in WtHr (p = .02). Higher self-esteem was associated with a lower baseline BMIz and WtHr (both p < .001), with a lower follow-up BMIz (p = .041) and WtHr (p = .096), as well as an increasing BMIz (p = .009) and WtHr (p = .016). Belonging to the resilient group was associated with a lower BMIz (p = .04) and WtHr (p = .004) at baseline, as well as a greater increase in BMIz (p = .009) and WtHr (p = .016) during the follow-up period when compared to the non-resilient group. Conclusion: Indicators of mental health and psychological resilience were associated with physical growth in adolescence, and their impact varied over time. These results underline the importance of considering mental health indicators in understanding and addressing adolescent obesity and its dynamics during this critical developmental period.

Aims. Eating disorder symptoms are common among adolescents, can lead to full-blown eating disorders and harm adolescent well-being. Parents’ influence on adolescent psychological development is notable but among eating disorder studies it has not been explored sufficiently. Few previous studies have included also subclinical symptoms or been longitudinal and most have used adolescent-reported data on parenting. Further, parenting sense of competence has not been studied as a risk factor. The current study explores whether parenting behavior and sense of competence in childhood predict problematic eating behaviour in adolescence. Methods. The used data was from a Finnish birth cohort study Glaku. Altogether 121 17-year-old adolescents (76 girls, 62.8%) answered eating behaviour related questions. Their 119 mothers and 96 fathers had answered parenting-related questions when children were 8. Used questionnaires included Parent Behaviour Inventory (hostility/support), Parenting Sense of Competence Scale (satisfaction/efficacy) and Eating Disorder Inventory 2 (drive for thinness/body dissatisfaction/bulimia). The associations were analysed with linear regression. Results and Conclusions. Fathers’ sense of competence, and subdimensions satisfaction and efficacy, predicted less body dissatisfaction (mean effect sizes 0.18–0.26 standard deviation units, p-values < .05). Gender did not affect the association between parenting and eating pathology. Fathers’ sense of competence may protect from adolescent eating pathology, which should be noted when developing preventions.

Objectives: Adolescence is a crucial time of change on many fronts: sleep is observed to be one that is affected heavily. Sleep is found to change during adolescence, by circadian rhythm shifting to later, homeostatic sleep pressure dispersing more quickly, and adolescents becoming more tolerant to it. Also, other factors related to more independence and rapid growth affect the dynamics of sleep. During this time also the usage of screenbased devices increases. It is proposed that these devices might affect the adolescents’ sleep detrimentally due to cognitive arousal, time displacement, or short-wavelength blue light. Thus, further investigation of the associations between sleep and screen time is needed. Methods: 318 (ages: 16–17 years old, 30% boys) adolescents participated in the study. Their sleep was monitored with actigraph for 7-10 consecutive days. Based on actigraphy data, sleep efficiency, duration, and latency were deduced. In addition, the screen time of the adolescents was followed up with a daily diary where usage of screen-based devices four hours before sleep was inquired. The association between sleep and screen time was studied by using mixed regression model, where screen time was placed as predictor and sleep dependent variable. For each respective sleep metric, a linear model was computed, thus, altogether three models were found. Results: Larger amounts of screen time was found to be negatively associated with sleep efficiency and positively associated with sleep onset latency. No evidence for the relationship between screen time and sleep duration was found. It was specifically found that lack of usage of screen-based devices before sleep was associated with higher sleep efficiency and longer latency. In terms of type of media, social media was found to have adverse effects on sleep efficiency and latency, whereas gaming predicted only worse sleep efficiency. An interaction effect of gaming and sex was found, suggesting that the gaming’s adverse effects are pronounced with boys. Conclusions: Although no relationship between sleep duration and screen time was found, screen time can be seen to affect the quality of sleep and other factors like sleep onset latency. To ensure the adequate levels of sleep during this crucial time of development, monitoring the amount of screen time is important to limit any adverse effects it may cause.

Aims of the study. The initial aim of this study was to discover the connections of adolescents’ sleep and exercise habits. It is known that adolescents generally sleep and exercise too little. Studies have also shown that physical activity and sleep are connected to each other. However, it is not completely clear how exercise affects sleep quality especially in young people. This study concentrates specifically on how the intensity of exercise affects different parameters of sleep quality in adolescents. Additionally, as the results are somewhat conflicting at the moment, another aim of this paper is to research the possible differences between girls and boys in these matters. Methods. This study was a part of SleepHelsinki! research, which is a population based cohort study. SleepHelsinki! was conducted in two phases. In the first phase, 7539 Finnish speaking adolescents participated in an online survey about their health habits. Altogether 552 adolescents were invited to the second phase of the study, in which they were given the actigraph device and instructions. The data in hand consists of 329 of those adolescents. Multivariate analysis was used for the statistical analysis of the data. Results and conclusions. High MET (metabolic equivalent) was connected to shorter sleep latency. Lesser activity was connected to later bed- and get up times, thus representing possibly a later chronotype. Among those who exercised more vigorously, sleep efficiency was higher with lower night time mobility and sleep latency. Basically the amount and intensity of exercise seem to have positive effects on sleep quality of adolescents. Additionally, in this data girls had better sleep quality whereas boys were slightly more physically active.

Background and objectives: Since early adolescence, the bedtimes and wake-up times begin to delay gradually until the early adulthood. This so-called shift to eveningness reaches its maximum at around the age of 20, and it usually occurs earlier in girls than boys. Eveningness has been previously associated with depression, anxiety, sleep problems, somatic symptoms, and other health-related issues in adolescents and adults. The aim of this study is to examine the associations between adolescents’ chronotype and their physical and mental well-being. Methods: This study examined how the self-reported chronotype was associated with self-reported problems related to adolescents’ physical and mental well-being. The chronotypes were divided into 5 types: Definitive Morning-types, Moderate Morning-types, Intermediate-types, Moderate Evening-types, and Definitive Evening-types. The participants were 7th, 8th and 9th graders, and the sample consisted of 6522 students from 83 schools in Finland. Some of the data was gathered at three time points, some at two time points, and some at one time point during the academic year. The associations between chronotype and well-being variables were studied cross-sectionally and some of them also longitudinally. Results: The main findings were that eveningness was associated with difficulty concentrating in lessons, susceptibility to give up easily on difficult tasks, school burnout symptoms, feelings of nervousness and anxiety, excessive worrying, difficulty relaxing, irritability, restlessness, difficulty falling asleep, waking up at night, daytime tiredness, and low mood as compared to morningness. Eveningness was also associated with neck and shoulder pain, lower back pain, and headache, as well as pain in the head and lower back due to the use of digital devices. Eveningness was associated with decreased concentration in lessons and increased susceptibility to give up on difficult tasks across time. On the other hand, feeling lonely and not being accepted as part of the group were associated with morningness. Conclusions: In conclusion, the physical and mental health problems were emphasized among Evening-type adolescents, as compared to Morning-type adolescents. Since adolescents shift toward eveningness, the need for thorough management of sleep and circadian problems should be highlighted, in order to intervene and improve the mental and physical well-being of adolescents both at school and at home.

Aims of the study. Previous studies have found that traumatic childhood experiences increase the risk of sleep problems in adulthood, but research in adolescence is scarce. Sleep problems negatively affect adolescents’ well-being, cognitive abilities and academic performance. The aim of this study was to examine how traumatic childhood experiences are associated with sleep in adolescence. Methods. This study was a part of SleepHelsinki! cohort study in the University of Helsinki. 305 adolescents aged 15-18 completed The Traumatic Experience Checklist (TEC) and sleep measurements including The Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) and actigraphy measurements. Traumatic childhood experiences were categorized into emotional traumas, bodily traumas and sexual traumas. Connections between sleep variables and traumatic childhood experiences were examined and ordinal logistic regression was used for the statistical analyses that included the impact of the experience and the age of onset. Results and conclusions. Traumatic childhood experiences had a statistically significant association with sleep problems, but the connection was not discovered regarding objectively measured sleep timing and duration. Similar associations were discovered for boys and girls. Sleep problems were worse the more traumatic experiences adolescent had experienced. This study did not find this association to be affected by age of onset or impact of the traumatic event. Results of this study indicate that traumatic childhood experiences are a risk factor for sleep problems in adolescence.