Spirituality, Religious Attendance and Health Complaints in Czech Adolescents

What is well-being? A scoping review of the conceptual and operational definitions of occupational well-being

Well-being is a multifaceted construct that is used across disciplines to portray a state of wellness, health, and happiness. While aspects of well-being seem universal, how it is depicted in the literature has substantial variation. The aim of this scoping review was to identify conceptual and operational definitions of well-being within the field of occupational health. Broad search terms were used related to well-being and scale/assessment. Inclusion criteria were (1) peer-reviewed articles, (2) published in English, (3) included a measure of well-being in the methods and results section of the article, and (4) empirical paper. The searches resulted in 4394 articles, 3733 articles were excluded by reading the abstract, 661 articles received a full review, and 273 articles were excluded after a full review, leaving 388 articles that met our inclusion criteria and were used to extract well-being assessment information. Many studies did not define well-being or link their conceptual definition to the operational assessment tool being used. There were 158 assessments of well-being represented across studies. Results highlight the lack of a consistent definitions of well-being and standardized measurements.

Structure of spirituality among high-school students differs depending on relationship with someone or something Greater (RSG)

Purpose: To investigate the structure of spirituality among teenagers, who live in a secular country, employing a QoL assessment, the EORTC QLQ-SWB32. Methods: Japanese high-school students, 15 to 17 years of age, answered EORTC QLQ-SWB32, which had 5 scales: Relationships with Others, Relationship with Self (RS), Existential, Relationship with Someone or Something Greater (RSG), and Change. It had “skip” items 22 and 23 (score range:0–200), which distinguished non-believers (score:0), light believers (score:33–66), and deep believers (score:100–200). Cronbach’s alpha and principal component analysis (PCA) were investigated. Correlations between item-32 (global spiritual well-being (SWB)) scores and 5 scale-scores were estimated. Global SWB scores were compared among groups via one-way ANOVA. Results: Among 283 male students, there were 142 non-believers (50%), 98 light believers (35%), and 43 deep believers (15%). Cronbach’s alpha values of the five scales were above 0.7 for deep believers. However, RSG did not show internal consistency for non-believers and light believers. PCA showed that the RSG items constructed a RSG scale for deep believers but did not make any scale for non-believers and light believers. The correlation coefficients between global SWB and RSG increased in order of non-believers (r = 0.295), light believers (r = 0.399), and deep believers (r = 0.559). RS correlated with global SWB in non-believers and light believers (r<- 0.4). Among groups, light believers had significantly better global SWB than non-believers and deep believers (p = 0.0312). Conclusion: The structure of spirituality among high-school students differs depending on RSG. And RS might be critical for students without sense of RSG. (250words)

Trends in multiple health complaints in Polish adolescents in light of data from 30 European countries and Canada (2002-2018)

Background

Adolescence is a sensitive period accompanied by rapid developmental changes that can result in health complaints. The aim of the study was to describe the trend of subjective health complaints (HBSC-SCL) of Polish adolescents compared to their peers from 30 other countries and to rank all countries based on a proposed standardised measure.

Material and Methods

Data from the Health Behaviour in School-Aged Children (HBSC) study collected from 2002 to 2018 were used. The overall number of respondents from 30 countries in the combined sample from five quadrennial rounds was 773,356, including 49.2% boys and 50.8% girls. The HBSC-SCL is a non-clinical measure consisting of eight health complaints, usually analysed in two dimensions of psychological and somatic symptoms. Linear regression analysis was applied to assess the significance of trends of the total index and two subindices in the combined sample and individual countries.

Results

A significant increasing trend for the eight-item index appeared in Poland only in 13- and 15-year-olds, while only among 15-year-olds in the combined sample from 30 countries. Standardised country rank varied between -1.85 and 2.48 (worst). The countries that achieved extreme negative values (>=1) are France, Hungary, Italy, and Sweden, and the rank for Italy is considerably higher than for other countries. In Poland, the standardised rank for psychological symptoms exceeded the threshold of +1 in 2018.

Conclusions

The HBSC-SCL index could be useful for monitoring change in adolescent mental health. The proposed method of ranking may allow a broader view of the differences and similarities between countries and help to identify those performing unfavourably against cross-country patterns.

The Coronavirus Pandemic and the Occurrence of Psychosomatic Symptoms: Are They Related?

Most studies on the coronavirus pandemic focus on clinical aspects of the COVID-19 disease. However, less attention is paid to other health aspects of the pandemic. The aim of this study was to assess the relationship between the coronavirus pandemic (risk of infection by virus together with associated measures taken to combat it), and the occurrence of a wide range of psychosomatic symptoms and to explore if there is any factor that plays a role in this association. We collected data from a sample of Czech adults (n = 1431) and measured the occurrence of nine health complaints, respondents’ experience during the pandemic and sociodemographic characteristics. The results showed associations between the coronavirus pandemic and increased psychosomatic symptoms and negative emotions. We further found higher risks of increased health complaints in younger people and women. It is also possible that there is higher risk of increased health complaints for respondents with secondary school education, students, and highly spiritual people, but this relationship has to be further investigated. In contrast, respondents with their highest achieved education level being secondary school graduation had a lower risk of increased frequency of stomach-ache. We also found that more negative emotions could increase the frequency of health complaints. Our findings suggest that the coronavirus pandemic and associated government measures could have a significant influence on the prevalence of health complaints and emotional state.