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Resilience in adolescence during the COVID-19 crisis in Canada

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic constitutes a social crisis that will have long-term health consequences for much of the global population, especially for adolescents. Adolescents are triply affected as they: 1) are experiencing its immediate, direct effects, 2) will carry forward health habits th...

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Autores principales: Chin, J., Di Maio, J., Weeraratne, T., Kennedy, K. M., Oliver, L. K., Bouchard, M., Malhotra, D., Habashy, J., Ding, J., Bhopa, S., Strommer, S., Hardy-Johnson, P., Barker, M., Sloboda, D. M., McKerracher, L.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10243272/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37280549
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-023-15813-6
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author Chin, J.
Di Maio, J.
Weeraratne, T.
Kennedy, K. M.
Oliver, L. K.
Bouchard, M.
Malhotra, D.
Habashy, J.
Ding, J.
Bhopa, S.
Strommer, S.
Hardy-Johnson, P.
Barker, M.
Sloboda, D. M.
McKerracher, L.
author_facet Chin, J.
Di Maio, J.
Weeraratne, T.
Kennedy, K. M.
Oliver, L. K.
Bouchard, M.
Malhotra, D.
Habashy, J.
Ding, J.
Bhopa, S.
Strommer, S.
Hardy-Johnson, P.
Barker, M.
Sloboda, D. M.
McKerracher, L.
author_sort Chin, J.
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic constitutes a social crisis that will have long-term health consequences for much of the global population, especially for adolescents. Adolescents are triply affected as they: 1) are experiencing its immediate, direct effects, 2) will carry forward health habits they develop now into adulthood, and 3) as future parents, will shape the early life health of the next generation. It is therefore imperative to assess how the pandemic is influencing adolescent wellbeing, identify sources of resilience, and outline strategies for attenuating its negative impacts. METHODS: We report the results of longitudinal analyses of qualitative data from 28 focus group discussions (FGDs) with 39 Canadian adolescents and of cross-sectional analyses of survey data from 482 Canadian adolescents gathered between September 2020 and August 2021. FGD participants and survey respondents reported on their: socio-demographic characteristics; mental health and wellbeing before and during the pandemic; pre- and during-pandemic health behaviours; experiences living through a crisis; current perceptions of their school, work, social, media, and governmental environments; and ideas about pandemic coping and mutual aid. We plotted themes emerging from FGDs along a pandemic timeline, noting socio-demographic variations. Following assessment for internal reliability and dimension reduction, quantitative health/wellbeing indicators were analyzed as functions of composite socio-demographic, health-behavioural, and health-environmental indicators. RESULTS: Our mixed methods analyses indicate that adolescents faced considerable mental and physical health challenges due to the pandemic, and were generally in poorer health than expected in non-crisis times. Nevertheless, some participants showed significantly better outcomes than others, specifically those who: got more exercise; slept better; were food secure; had clearer routines; spent more time in nature, deep in-person social relationships, and leisure; and spent less time on social media. CONCLUSIONS: Support for youth during times of crisis is essential to future population health because adolescence is a period in the life course which shapes the health behaviours, socio-economic capacities, and neurophysiology of these future parents/carers and leaders. Efforts to promote resilience in adolescents should leverage the factors identified above: helping them find structure and senses of purpose through strong social connections, well-supported work and leisure environments, and opportunities to engage with nature. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12889-023-15813-6.
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spelling pubmed-102432722023-06-07 Resilience in adolescence during the COVID-19 crisis in Canada Chin, J. Di Maio, J. Weeraratne, T. Kennedy, K. M. Oliver, L. K. Bouchard, M. Malhotra, D. Habashy, J. Ding, J. Bhopa, S. Strommer, S. Hardy-Johnson, P. Barker, M. Sloboda, D. M. McKerracher, L. BMC Public Health Research BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic constitutes a social crisis that will have long-term health consequences for much of the global population, especially for adolescents. Adolescents are triply affected as they: 1) are experiencing its immediate, direct effects, 2) will carry forward health habits they develop now into adulthood, and 3) as future parents, will shape the early life health of the next generation. It is therefore imperative to assess how the pandemic is influencing adolescent wellbeing, identify sources of resilience, and outline strategies for attenuating its negative impacts. METHODS: We report the results of longitudinal analyses of qualitative data from 28 focus group discussions (FGDs) with 39 Canadian adolescents and of cross-sectional analyses of survey data from 482 Canadian adolescents gathered between September 2020 and August 2021. FGD participants and survey respondents reported on their: socio-demographic characteristics; mental health and wellbeing before and during the pandemic; pre- and during-pandemic health behaviours; experiences living through a crisis; current perceptions of their school, work, social, media, and governmental environments; and ideas about pandemic coping and mutual aid. We plotted themes emerging from FGDs along a pandemic timeline, noting socio-demographic variations. Following assessment for internal reliability and dimension reduction, quantitative health/wellbeing indicators were analyzed as functions of composite socio-demographic, health-behavioural, and health-environmental indicators. RESULTS: Our mixed methods analyses indicate that adolescents faced considerable mental and physical health challenges due to the pandemic, and were generally in poorer health than expected in non-crisis times. Nevertheless, some participants showed significantly better outcomes than others, specifically those who: got more exercise; slept better; were food secure; had clearer routines; spent more time in nature, deep in-person social relationships, and leisure; and spent less time on social media. CONCLUSIONS: Support for youth during times of crisis is essential to future population health because adolescence is a period in the life course which shapes the health behaviours, socio-economic capacities, and neurophysiology of these future parents/carers and leaders. Efforts to promote resilience in adolescents should leverage the factors identified above: helping them find structure and senses of purpose through strong social connections, well-supported work and leisure environments, and opportunities to engage with nature. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12889-023-15813-6. BioMed Central 2023-06-06 /pmc/articles/PMC10243272/ /pubmed/37280549 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-023-15813-6 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research
Chin, J.
Di Maio, J.
Weeraratne, T.
Kennedy, K. M.
Oliver, L. K.
Bouchard, M.
Malhotra, D.
Habashy, J.
Ding, J.
Bhopa, S.
Strommer, S.
Hardy-Johnson, P.
Barker, M.
Sloboda, D. M.
McKerracher, L.
Resilience in adolescence during the COVID-19 crisis in Canada
title Resilience in adolescence during the COVID-19 crisis in Canada
title_full Resilience in adolescence during the COVID-19 crisis in Canada
title_fullStr Resilience in adolescence during the COVID-19 crisis in Canada
title_full_unstemmed Resilience in adolescence during the COVID-19 crisis in Canada
title_short Resilience in adolescence during the COVID-19 crisis in Canada
title_sort resilience in adolescence during the covid-19 crisis in canada
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10243272/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37280549
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-023-15813-6
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