Impact of health behaviours and deprivation on well-being in a national sample of English young people

OBJECTIVE: To determine the modifiable factors influencing well-being in boys and girls by accounting for deprivation, ethnicity and clustering within local authorities. METHODS: We used data from a very large nationally representative survey, the What About Youth study involving 120 115 adolescents aged 15 years. Our outcome measure of mental well-being was the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale (WEMWBS). Potential explanatory factors included substance abuse, screen time, eating habits, reading, bullying, sleeping pattern, physical activity and area-level deprivation. We ran unadjusted and adjusted multilevel models for each explanatory factor, after adjusting for ethnicity, deprivation and including a random effect for the local authority. RESULTS: Boys had a higher overall mean WEMWBS score than girls (p<0.0001). In the adjusted model, each of multiple risk behaviours, eating habits, sleep, bullying, physical activity, screen-time and reading were independently associated with mental well-being in both boy and girls (p<0.0001 for both). Sleep and eating behaviours had a stronger association in both sexes than bullying, physical activity and screen time. Young people from black ethnic groups had significantly higher well-being in both sexes. Deprivation was not associated with well-being among boys but was among girls. CONCLUSION: The largest contributors to adolescent well-being appear to be sleep, eating behaviours and bullying when considered in a multivariable framework. While adolescents from black ethnic groups had higher overall well-being scores, area deprivation did not affect male well-being but had a small effect on female well-being. Future longitudinal studies and health policies need to consider a range of behavioural factors to drive improvements in adolescent well-being.