Psychological Distress, Somatic Complaints, and Their Relation to Negative Psychosocial Factors in a Sample of Swedish High School Students

Abstract

Background: Adolescence is a period in life characterized by major neurobiological, physiological, and psychological changes. Those changes may give rise to worsened mental health and an increased prevalence of somatic complaints combined with a negative psychosocial environment. Rapid changes in society, which may also affect young people in several ways, call for a renewed screening of today's adolescents' mental and somatic well-being.Aim: The present study's primary aim was to measure the level of self-rated psychological distress and the prevalence of somatic complaints in a sample of Swedish high school students. As a secondary aim, it identifies gender-specific patterns and examines mental and somatic health in relation to negative psychosocial factors (such as parental alcohol use problems or the experience of physical or psychological abuse).Method: Two hundred and eighty-seven Swedish high school students completed a survey including the Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI) and a questionnaire about the presence of defined somatic complaints. In order to examine the relationship between negative psychosocial factors and mental and somatic health, three groups were formed: those reporting (i) parental substance use problems, (ii) previous experience of abuse, (iii) none of these problems.Results: The majority of the Swedish high-school students (>80%) reported no or only a few problems with psychological distress and no or only one somatic complaint. Female students disclosed a significantly higher psychological distress level captured by each BSI domain. The number of somatic complaints was similarly distributed between the genders. The students rarely reported parental substance use problems, but almost 40% of the male and 50% of the female students indicated the experience of physical and/or psychological abuse. Such negative psychosocial circumstances were related to an increased level of anxiety in the male and an increased general level of psychological distress in female students.Conclusions: The study confirmed female students' higher psychological distress level. Gender differences in the type of somatic complaints, but not in the number were detected. The experience of physical and/or psychological abuse was found to significantly worsen psychological distress in students of both genders.

Mental Health Profiles in a Sample of Moroccan High School Students: Comparison Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…Being a girl tripled the risk of reporting increased levels of depression and paranoid ideation during the COVID-19 pandemic in Morocco. Similar results have been found by previous studies carried out before the announcement of the COVID-19 pandemic in Moroccan, Swedish, and Israeli adolescent samples (25,26,101); these results reinforce the conclusion that Moroccan adolescents already reported the worst mental health profile before the COVID-19 pandemic, represented by their higher depression and paranoid ideation scores compared with adolescents from other countries and confirm the feminine trait of mental health problems, as discussed above.…”

“…No association was found between parental substance use problems and depression/paranoid ideation symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic among Moroccan adolescents; in contrast, a recent study showed that Swedish adolescents who reported parental substance use problems scored significantly higher in the PSY, PAR, DEP, and ANX dimensions of the BSI (26). In addition to the Islamic religion, which prohibits the consumption of drugs and alcohol, this non-association between parental substance use problems and the mental health problems diagnosed during the COVID-19 pandemic in the Moroccan adolescent sample can be related to the traffic restrictions required during the COVID-19 pandemic period, which contributed to reducing access to these substances, and therefore, the decrease in their consumption by parents.…”

“…Girls experience higher levels of episodic stress and are more responsive to these stressors, which increases their likelihood of having a high level of psychological distress compared with boys (54,(60)(61)(62)(63). Previous studies have shown that girls exposed to a stressful event, such as stress-related school, an experience of physical or psychological abuse, parental substance use problems, parental depression, family dysfunction, and negative parenting behaviors, report more psychological distress compared with boys exposed to the same conditions (25,26,60,61,64).…”

“…In addition, parental substance use problems may affect the mental health of children. Recent studies caried out on Moroccan and Swedish adolescents show that adolescents who have at least one parent with substance use problems (drugs and/or alcohol) reported more mental health problems ( 25 , 26 ).…”

Changes in Adolescents’ Psychosocial Functioning and Well-Being as a Consequence of Long-Term COVID-19 Restrictions

“…Therefore, we believe that the gender-specific results did not emerge from the uneven gender representation in our sample. Instead, the higher levels of stress, psychological distress, and mental health complaints in female adolescents compared to male adolescents seems to be a consistent finding in different cultures [25][26][27][28][29]. It is hypothesized that a higher level of anxiety and perceived stress in female adolescents originates from the higher demands placed on them in different arenas of life, such as family and school [30,31].…”