Mental health and wellbeing among adolescents in Scotland: profile and trends

Mental Health and Wellbeing among Adolescents in Scotland looks at trends and key associations for the mental health of boys and girls aged 13 and 15. The report found that friendships and a positive experience of school are the two things most closely aligned with mental wellbeing. Other factors include playing sport at least once a week, belonging to a club, expecting to go to university and reading books. Deprivation and poorer physical health both correlate with lower mental wellbeing.

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Footnotes

1. These figures are based on sample sizes of 7,695 and 8,401 giving confidence intervals of around +/-1%. As such, this difference is clearly significant.

2. Mean score (as opposed to the median score).

3. Inverclyde and Renfrewshire have been excluded due to small base sizes.

4. In this instance, average knowledge is represented by the median score, rather than the mean.

5. Free school meals are provided to those whose parents receive benefits or incomes fall below a certain threshold. As such, free school meal entitlement is often used as a proxy for the level of deprivation of pupils' families.

6. Figures on free school meals entitlement were based on pupils' survey responses and not official records. Official records show 41,744 pupils (15% of pupils) were registered for free meals in Scottish secondary schools in 2013. In SALSUS 2013, 12% of pupils said they received free school meals - which is very similar. http://www.gov.scot/Resource/0047/00479422.pdf

7. Answers in the 'other' category includes youth training, unemployed, don't know and those that said other.

8. Some of these postcodes were incorrect due to scanning errors and were manually edited rather than imputed

9. http://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/statistics-and-data/statistics/statistics-by-theme/population/population-estimates/special-area-population-estimates/population-estimates-by-simd-2012

10. Analysis was limited to 2013 due to the changes in the prevalence of borderline or abnormal scores across time.

11. This table is based on the logistic regression models reported in Tables F1a and F1b in Appendix F. "Yes, a lot" indicates log odds of less than 0.6 or greater than 1.67. "Yes, some" indicates log odds between 0.6 and 1.67 but a significant effect.

indicates that it may be a non-linear relationship or that the direction of the effect is not what might be assumed.

Contact

Email: Iain MacAllister

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