Family Support as Smoking Prevention during Transition from Early to Late Adolescence: A Study in 42 Countries.

Family support has a beneficial impact on protecting health-risk behaviour in adolescents. This study aimed to explore whether family support is associated with risk of smoking during transition from early (11 years) to late (15 years) adolescence across 42 countries. The data from the cross-national Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) study in 2017/2018 were employed (N = 195,966). Family support was measured using the four-item Family dimension of the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (sum score 20 or more was categorised as high family support). Smoking was defined as a reported cigarette smoking at least 1-2 days in the last 30 days. The association between smoking and family support was assessed using a prevalence ratio (PR) obtained from the multivariate Poisson regression. Over two thirds of adolescents reported high levels of support from their family. Family support was found to significantly decrease with age in most of the countries, with the boys reported high level of family support more often than girls. The adolescents who reported having low family support also were more likely to smoke compared to their peers who reported having high family support (PR = 1.81; 95% CI: 1.71-1.91 in boys, and PR = 2.19; 95% CI: 2.08-2.31 in girls). The countries with a stronger effect of family support in reducing smoking risk indicated lower rates of adolescent smoking as well as lower increases in the cigarette smoking prevalence during the age period from 11 to 15 years. This study reinforces the need for family support, which is an important asset helping adolescents to overcome the risk of smoking during their transition from early to late adolescence.

Prevalence and Social Inequality in Youth Loneliness in the UK.

Using data from the English arm of the Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) study, we examined the prevalence of loneliness for school-aged adolescents and how it is linked to social inequalities. The HBSC study collects data from 11-, 13-, and 15-year-olds, and is repeated every four years, allowing the exploration of prevalence rates of loneliness pre COVID-19 pandemic for comparison. We also explored whether loneliness was associated with socio-economic status (SES) and linked to academic attainment and health complaints. The total sample was 14,077 from 156 schools in England. Findings revealed a stable prevalence rate of 8.2% for loneliness from 2006 to 2014. We also found, across all survey years, (1) those aged 15 years were significantly lonelier than younger peers, (2) those who reported lower SES were lonelier than their more well-off peers, and (3) higher loneliness was associated with being '"below average" academically and reporting more health complaints. Conclusions: These prevalence data enable researchers, policymakers, and others to make comparisons with prevalence rates during the COVID-19 pandemic to explore whether there have been increases in loneliness among school-aged adolescents. Loneliness was consistently related to social inequalities, suggesting that targeted interventions that include whole systems changes are needed.

Self-harm in adolescence: protective health assets in the family, school and community.

OBJECTIVES: The aim of this paper was to examine if the multiple environments of the adolescent including family, peers, school and neighbourhood might function as protective health assets against self-harming behaviour during adolescence. METHODS: The present study utilised data collected from 1608 respondents aged 15 years as part of the England WHO Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) Study. Multilevel modelling was undertaken using the package MLwiN (version 2.33) to investigate the potential domains and dimensions of family life, school culture and environment, and neighbourhood factors that may operate as protective health assets. RESULTS: The results indicated that while peer support did not appear to operate as a protective health asset in the context of self-harm, key dimensions of adolescent/parent interaction and adolescent experience of the school culture and their neighbourhood were associated with reduced likelihood of self-harming behaviours during adolescence. CONCLUSIONS: The Findings highlight the significance of belonging and connectedness as important constituent elements of protective health assets for young people. Interventions that address the multiple environments of the young person, may offer an effective means to reduce the levels of self-harm.