Abstract
Previous research is inconclusive as to whether having an immigration background acts as a risk factor for poor mental health in adolescents, and furthermore, what contribution the social context in which adolescents grow up may make. To address these questions, the current study uses an integrative resilience framework to investigate the association between immigration background and adolescent mental health, and the moderating role of social capital at the individual, the school, and the national level. The study uses data gathered from nationally representative samples of adolescents aged 11, 13, and 15 years(N girls=63,425 (52.1%);Mage=13.57, SD=1.64) from 29 countries participating in the 2017/18 Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) study. Data analysis reveals that first- and second-generation immigrants reported higher levelsof life dissatisfaction and psychosomatic symptoms than their native peers, and that this association varied across schools andcountries. In addition, social capital was found to moderate the association between immigration background and adolescentmental health. Individual-level social support from peers and family and national-level trust protected against poor mentalhealth in adolescents with an immigration background, while the opposite was true for individual-level teacher support. Supportive teacher-student relationships were found to provide more protection against poor mental health for native adolescents than for immigrant adolescents. Our findings indicate the importance of taking an ecological approach to design interventions to reduce the negative effects of having an immigration background on adolescent mental health.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 855-871 |
Number of pages | 17 |
Journal | Journal of Youth and Adolescence |
Volume | 50 |
Issue number | 5 |
Early online date | 31 Mar 2021 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - May 2021 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:K.D. and M.D. work is supported by the government of Flanders. The funding source had no role in the design or conduct of the study. C.M.M.’s work was supported by the VI Plan Propio de Investigación de la Universidad de Sevilla 2018, under the action “II.5B Contrato de acceso al Sistema Español de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación para el Desarrollo del Programa Propio de I + D + i de la Universidad de Sevilla”.
Funding Information:
HBSC is an international study carried out in collaboration with WHO/EURO. The international coordinator of the 2017/18 study was Jo Inchley (University of Glasgow); and the data bank manager was Oddrun Samdal, (University of Bergen). The 2017/18 survey included in this study were conducted by the following Principal Investigators in the 29 countries and regions: Albania (Gentiana Qirjako), Austria (Rosemarie Felder-Puig), Flemish Belgium (Bart De Clercq), French Belgium (Katia Castetbon), Bulgaria (Lidiya Vasileva), Croatia (Ivana Pavic Simetin), Czech Republic (Michal Kalman), Estonia (Leila Oja, Katrin Aasvee), Finland (Jorma Tynj?l?), Germany (Matthias Richter), Greece (Anna Kokkevi), Hungary (?gnes N?meth), Iceland (Arsaell M. Arnarsson), Ireland (Saoirse Nic Gabhainn), Italy (Franco Cavallo), Luxembourg (Helmut Willems), Malta (Charmaine Gauci), Netherlands (Gonneke Stevens, Saskia van Dorsselaer), Norway (Oddrun Samdal), Poland (Joanna Mazur), Portugal (Margarida Gaspar de Matos), Romania (Adriana Baban), Russian Federation (Anna Matochkina), Scotland (Jo Inchley), Serbia (Jelena Rakic), Slovenia (Helena Jericek), Spain (Carmen Moreno), Sweden (Petra Lofstedt, Lilly Augustine), Switzerland (Marina Delgrande-Jordan, Herv? Kuendig).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.