Girls growing through adolescence have a higher risk of poor health

Abstract

Introduction: Self rated health, in adult population, is strongly associated with mortality and life expectancy. In younger people this association is less evident, but it may anticipate a similar risk in adult life. Our research, based on the HBSC (Health Behaviour in School-Aged Children) International collaboration, contributes to deepen the knowledge in this field by monitoring adolescents' health through a multinational survey involving 29 European countries, plus North America (Canada and USA) and Israel. Methods: Following an established methodology, the HBSC survey has elaborated a questionnaire on health and health behaviour, filled in by a representative national sample of 11-, 13-and 15-year-old boys and girls. The sample is constituted of more than 160,000 subjects interviewed during the 2001/2002 survey. Reported symptoms and self-rated health have been analysed by sex and age and through the different countries. Results: Girls resulted to have a poorer perception of their health, with respect to males, at all ages and in all countries (Overall OR = 1.70, 95% CI: 1.66-1.76). Age increases this risk both for males and females, with an average increase of 32% (95% CI: 29-34%) per year in the age-range 11-15. The situation is similar for reported symptoms, with an overall OR of 1.81 (95% CI: 1.77-1.85) for females of reporting three or more symptoms at least once a week; also this risk increases of 26% (95% CI: 24-27%) per year during the pre-adolescence phase. In both cases it could be shown a significant interaction effect between age and gender: OR = 1.19 (CI: 1.15-1.23) for perceived health and OR = 1.26 (CI: 1.23-1.29) for reported symptoms in females with respect to males. Conclusions: Even if adolescence is described as the healthiest period of life, a consistent minority of young people perceive and report a poor health and a high number of symptoms. Females are constantly in a worse position than males and older age groups are worse than younger ones.

Trends in self-rated health in European and North-American adolescents from 2002 to 2010 in 32 countries

“…Analysis by gender and age differences confirms known existing results 6 , that is lower self-rated health among girls and a decreasing rating with age; this finding underlines the reliability and consistency of our data.…”

“…Cavallo et al 6 reported a gender by age interaction in self-rated health, with girls reporting poorer health across ages 11 to 15.…”

How different contexts of social capital are associated with self-rated health among Lithuanian high-school students

“…In line with other research, girls consistently rated their health lower than boys. A large international study on adolescents’ health-related factors revealed that girls have a poorer perception of their health in comparison to boys, at all ages, and in all 29 countries surveyed [4]. Vingiliset al [49] found that youth 12–19 years of age in the top quintile (20%) of body mass index had lower health ratings.…”

“…Self-rated health is a subjective, change-sensitive measure of health which covers the ability to function in physical, social, and psychological contexts [2,3]. Adolescents’ self-rated health is related to a number of factors, beginning with sociodemographic factors, such as age, gender, family, and socioeconomic status [4–7]; followed by health-related behavior, such as mental health [7]; and ending with social environment [6]. …”

Assessing quality of life: mother–child agreement in depressed and non-depressed Hungarian

“…These tendencies have been shown both in somatically ill and general child and adolescent populations. Socio-economical status (SES) seems to have no effect on agreement [4,31].…”