Trends in perceived school stress among adolescentsin five Nordic countries 2002–2014

Abstract

Associations between school-related stress and poor health, risk behaviours and low well-being are well documented. The aim of this paper was to estimate trends of perceived school stress experienced by boys and girls of different ages in the Nordic countries, and to describe trends in school stress between the Nordic countries. Nordic data from the Health Behaviour in School-aged Children study (HBSC) between 2002 and 2014 were used. The participants were aged 11-16 years. School stress was measured by a single item; "How pressured do you feel by schoolwork?" The participants answering "some" or "a lot" were categorised as reporting school stress. Sweden, Norway and Denmark had lower prevalence of school stress compared to Finland and Iceland. There was an increase in Iceland, Finland and Denmark, whereas adolescents from Sweden showed a decreasing trend. In Norway, the level was stable. Boys showed a marginal decline in school stress whereas girls showed an increase, and school stress increased by age for the whole period. It is a challenge for the public education systems in the Nordic countries to develop policies and practices that provide children with the necessary tools to achieve knowledge and skill, and at the same minimise stress in school.

Towards enhancing research on adolescent positivemental health

“…The trend analysis presented in the different papers in the present journal issue Potrebny et al, 2018;Due et al, 2018a;Thorsteinsson et al, 2018;Arnarsson et al, 2018;Löfstedt et al, 2018 ) can also be extended to include 1985-2018 for most of these indicators. What are the long-term trends in mental health and well-being in the Nordic countries?…”

“…In the period 2002 to 2014, the level of school pressure was highest in Iceland and Finland (Löfstedt et al, 2018). In Denmark, Iceland and Finland, there was an increase in perceived school pressure over the period, whereas prevalence levels were decreasing in Sweden.…”

Factors behind a remarkable increase in adolescent psychiatric inpatient treatment between 1980 and 2010 – a nationwide register study

“…There were significant cuts across services, for example in family services, school support and healthcare, all important for the promotion of mental health, and the prevention of disorders [14,15]. In addition to cuts in preventive services, the economic recession may have had far-reaching consequences for those born in the early 1990s and reaching adolescence in the mid-2000s due to family stress [39][40][41][42].…”

“…It is also possible that, while adolescents in later cohorts share the same characteristics with earlier generations, the society around them has changed in a way that imposes more demands on them, making coping with those demands harder than before, eventually leading to seeking or being referred to psychiatric treatment [41,43,44].…”

Girls suffer: the prevalence and predicting factors of emotional problems among adolescents during upper secondary school in Norway

“…According to a study that compared the student reports on the perceptions of school pressure between 1994 and 2010, the level of perceived pressure did not increase during the period, except for a temporary uptake between 2002 and 2006. However, recent research indicates that the prevalence of adolescent experience of school stress has increased during the last decade (Bakken et al, 2018;Löfstedt et al, 2019), and that there is a clear association between school stress and emotional problems (Låftman and Modin, 2012;Ringdal et al, 2020).…”