Self-reported physical and mental health status and quality of life in adolescents: a latent variable mediation model

Abstract

BackgroundWe examined adolescents' differentiation of their self-reported physical and mental health status, the relative importance of these variables and five important life domains (satisfaction with family, friends, living environment, school and self) with respect to adolescents' global quality of life (QOL), and the extent to which the five life domains mediate the relationships between self-reported physical and mental health status and global QOL.MethodsThe data were obtained via a cross-sectional health survey of 8,225 adolescents in 49 schools in British Columbia, Canada. Structural equation modeling was applied to test the implied latent variable mediation model. The Pratt index (d) was used to evaluate variable importance.ResultsRelative to one another, self-reported mental health status was found to be more strongly associated with depressive symptoms, and self-reported physical health status more strongly associated with physical activity. Self-reported physical and mental health status and the five life domains explained 76% of the variance in global QOL. Relatively poorer mental health and physical health were significantly associated with lower satisfaction in each of the life domains. Global QOL was predominantly explained by three of the variables: mental health status (d = 30%), satisfaction with self (d = 42%), and satisfaction with family (d = 20%). Satisfaction with self and family were the predominant mediators of mental health and global QOL (45% total mediation), and of physical health and global QOL (68% total mediation).ConclusionsThis study provides support for the validity and relevance of differentiating self-reported physical and mental health status in adolescent health surveys. Self-reported mental health status and, to a lesser extent, self-reported physical health status were associated with significant differences in the adolescents' satisfaction with their family, friends, living environment, school experiences, self, and their global QOL. Questions about adolescents' self-reported physical and mental health status and their experiences with these life domains require more research attention so as to target appropriate supportive services, particularly for adolescents with mental or physical health challenges.

Does the Association between Depressive Symptomatology and Physical Activity Depend on Body Image Perception? A Survey of Students from Seven Universities in the UK

“…In relation to one another, depressive symptoms were more strongly associated with self-reported mental health status, while PA was more strongly linked with self-reported physical health [30]. Perceived health incorporates physical, emotional and personal components of health that collectively make up individual “healthiness” ([14], p. 242).…”

A Longitudinal Analysis of Physical and Psychological Wellbeing amongst Late Adolescents: Exploring the Transition from School to Postschool Life

“…Sawatzky et al, 2010), this finding shows that being physically healthy promotes individuals' positive evaluations of their life. While this set of findings is consistent with what has been documented in the literature, the findings are unique in that the physical health benefits on psychological health and perceived life quality and satisfaction at Time 2 remained significant even after controlling for prior variance of the psychological wellbeing factors.…”

“…However, many of these studies relied on either a rather narrow conceptualisation of wellbeing and/or a limited scope of their measurement of wellbeing; for example, by operationalising sleep quality (Steptoe et al, 2008) or sleep duration (Hamilton et al, 2007) as physical wellbeing constructs, and by measuring psychological wellbeing with a global indicator (Nagyova et al, 2005), or a single item measure of mental and physical health (Sawatzky et al, 2010;see also Lyubbomirsky, King, & Diener, 2005, for a review). Moreover, most of these studies were conducted with general adult populations (see Bize et al, for a review), particularly adults with physical vulnerabilities, including people with chronic fatigue symptoms (Van Damme et al, 2006), spinal cord injury (Ginis et al, 2010), or rheumatoid arthritis (Nagyova et al, 2005).…”

Internalizing disorders and quality of life in adolescence: evidence for independent associations

“…32 In a previous study investigating the contributions of mental and nutritional aspects to global QoL in adolescence, Sawatsky et al 33 found that 42% of the variance of global QoL scores was explained by satisfaction with self; 30% by mental health; 20% by satisfaction with family environment; 4% by satisfaction with living environment; 3% by physical health; and 0% by satisfaction with friendship. Although our theoretical and analytical approaches are somewhat different from those of the Sawatsky et al study, 33 on one hand, our results are in agreement with their findings about mental health and satisfaction with self as the variables that most account for variance in global QoL scores. On the other hand, our results suggested that peer relationships are an important factor for adolescent QoL.…”