Factors associated with internalizing or somatic symptoms in a cross-sectional study of school children in grades 1-10

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>School related factors that may contribute to children's subjective health have not been extensively studied. We assessed whether factors assumed to promote health and factors assumed to have adverse effects were associated with self-reported internalizing or somatic symptoms.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>In a cross-sectional study, 230 boys and 189 girls in grades 1-10 from five schools responded to the same set of questions. Proportional odds logistic regression was used to assess associations of school related factors with the prevalence of sadness, anxiety, stomach ache, and headache.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In multivariable analyses, perceived loneliness showed strong and positive associations with sadness (odds ratio, 1.94, 95% CI 1.42 to 2.64), anxiety (odds ratio, 1.78, 95% CI 1.31 to 2.42), and headache (odds ratio, 1.47, 95% CI 1.10 to 1.96), with consistently stronger associations for girls than boys. Among assumed health promoting factors, receiving necessary help from teachers was associated with lower prevalence of stomach ache in girls (odds ratio, 0.51, 95% CI 0.30 to 0.87).</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>These findings suggest that perceived loneliness may be strongly related to both internalizing and somatic symptoms among school children, and for girls, the associations of loneliness appear to be particularly strong.</p

Patterns of socioeconomic inequality in adolescent health differ according to the measure of socioeconomic position

Abstract Socioeconomic differences in health are ubiquitous across age groups, cultures,and health domains. However, variation in the size and pattern of health inequalities appears to relate to the measure of socioeconomic position (SEP) applied. Little attention has been paid to these differences in adolescents and their implications for health surveillance and policy. We examined health inequalities in 1371 adolescents in seven European countries using four measures of SEP: youth-reported material assets and subjective social status and parent-reported material assets and household income. For each SEP variable, we estimated risk ratios, risk differences, concentration curves, and concentration indices of inequality for fair/poor self-rated health and low life satisfaction. Results showed that inequalities in health and life satisfaction were largest when subjective social status was used as the SEP variable. Moreover, health inequalities defined by subjective social status did not change after differences in assets and income were statistically controlled. Although material assets yielded similar health inequalities as household income, the results suggest that subjective and objective SEP relate differently to adolescent health and are not equivalent indicators of the same construct. In addition, possible bidirectional effects on health and wellbeing may inflate health inequalities defined by subjective social status. These results indicate that SEP differences in adolescent health are relate more closely to psychosocial processes than to material inequality