Visiting again? Subjective well-being of children in elementary school and repeated visits to school health nurses

Factors Affecting Health-Related Behaviors in Younger School-Age Korean Children

PURPOSE

Although many studies have reported factors influencing school-age children's health behaviors, most focus on later childhood and early adolescence. It is important to understand children's own perspectives on their health-related behaviors to promote child health. This study identified factors affecting health-related behaviors among younger school-age children via self-report assessments.

DESIGN AND METHODS

Participants (N = 636) were children aged 8 to 9 years (second and third grade) at six elementary schools in South Korea. The variables examined were child characteristics, health locus of control, perceived parental attention, peer support, school environment, and health-related behaviors. A hierarchical linear regression analysis was performed to identify factors predicting younger school-age children's health-related behaviors.

RESULTS

Socioeconomic status (family affluence score) had the strongest impact on health-related behaviors, followed by health locus of control, parental attention, and peer support. Living with both parents also had a positive effect. The present results suggest that children within aged 8 to 9 years have the ability to consciously choose and implement health-related behaviors.

CONCLUSIONS

Based on these findings, recommendations are as follows: 1) collaboration between parents and health professionals, which, given the importance of parental attention, represents the best approach for guiding children's health-related behaviors; and 2) attention paid to children from low-income backgrounds (at both the school and community levels) can help prevent health inequalities arising from socioeconomic status.

Effectiveness of holistic group health promotion program on educational stress, anxiety, and depression among adolescent girls - A pilot study

Background:

Academic stress is one of the major stresses among adolescents and it has been associated with poor mental health.

Aim:

Evaluate effectiveness of holistic intervention on educational stress among adolescent girls.

Materials and Methods:

Randomized controlled design was adopted and study was conducted at selected colleges of Dharwad city, India. 60 adolescent girls were randomly assigned to either experimental or control group. All subjects were initially assessed for educational stress, depression and anxiety. The experimental group subjects received 8 sessions of holistic intervention. No intervention was given to control group subjects. Post intervention assessments were done at the end of 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd months.

Results:

Experimental group subjects showed statistically significant decrease in educational stress, depression and anxiety over 3 months follow-up compared to control group subjects.

Conclusion:

This study provided evidence of integrating a holistic intervention in reducing stress.

Gender-based generalisations in school nurses' appraisals of and interventions addressing students' mental health

Background

There has been an increase of reports describing mental health problems in adolescents, especially girls. School nurses play an important role in supporting young people with health problems. Few studies have considered how the nurses’ gender norms may influence their discussions.

Methods

To investigate this issue, semi-structured interviews focusing on school nurses’ work with students who have mental health problems were conducted. Transcripts of interviews with Swedish school nurses (n = 15) from the Help overcoming pain early project (HOPE) were analysed using theories on gender as a theoretical framework and then organised into themes related to the school nurses’ provision of contact and intervention. The interviewees were all women, aged between 42–63 years, who had worked as nurses for 13–45 years, and as school nurses for 2–28 years. Five worked in upper secondary schools (for students aged 16–19) and 10 in secondary schools (for students aged 12–16).

Results

The results show that school nurses more commonly associated mental health problems with girls. When the school nurses discussed students that were difficult to reach, boys in particular were mentioned. However, very few nurses mentioned specific intervention to address students’ mental health problems, and all of the mentioned interventions were focused on girls. Some of the school nurses reported that it was more difficult to initiate a health dialogue with boys, yet none of the nurses had organized interventions for the boys.

Conclusions

We conclude that generalisations can sometimes be analytically helpful, facilitating, for instance, the identification of problems in school nurses’ work methods and interventions. However, the most important conclusion from our research, which applied a design that is not commonly used, is that more varied approaches, as well as a greater awareness of potential gender stereotype pitfalls, are necessary to meet the needs of diverse student groups.

Electronic supplementary material

The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12913-016-1710-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Health: A Developing Concept in Nursing

PURPOSE

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the level of maturity of the concept of health in the nursing discipline.

METHOD

The four principles of Morse and colleagues were used to evaluate the level of maturity of the health concept-epistemological, logical, pragmatical, and linguistical.

FINDINGS

This evaluation suggests that the concept of health in nursing is immature, defined inconsistently, and with different instruments.

CONCLUSION

Health is a central concept for nursing. Additional concept development and clarification are needed.

PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS

For the concept of health to be conceptualized, it is important that nurses have consensus regarding the definition of health. The nursing discipline should define health in a manner that is consistent with its philosophical presuppositions. Further, it should be measurable, empirically based, and capture the outcomes that are sensitive to the nursing interventions.