Gender and secular trends in adolescent mental health over 24 years - The role of school-related stress

摘要

Increasing levels of psychosomatic symptoms, and other mental health problems, among adolescents, and especially among girls, have been reported across various countries. The "educational stressors hypothesis" states that this trend can be explained by an increasing amount of stressors in the school environment. This study tests this hypothesis, using repeated cross-sectional data, between the years 1993-2017, from the Health Behaviours of School-aged Children (HBSC) survey. Regression and decomposition techniques are used to investigate the role of school stress for trends in psychosomatic symptoms, and for gender differences in symptoms.