Socioecological Predictors on Psychological Flourishing in the US Adolescence

Association among friendship skills, involvement in after-school activities, and flourishing for adolescents with asthma and comorbid emotional and behavioral problems

OBJECTIVES

Primary objectives were to examine the relations among abilities for making and keeping friends, involvement in after-school activities, and flourishing for adolescents with current asthma, as well as comorbid behavior problems, anxiety, or depression.

METHODS

Data from the 2021 National Survey of Child Health was analyzed. Parents provided data on one child. Multinomial logistic regression analyses, both unadjusted and adjusted for the sampling weight, were conducted for adolescents with current asthma and comorbid behavior problems, anxiety, or depression. Predictors of flourishing included difficulty in making and keeping friends and involvement in after-school activities. Sex, age, race/ethnic group, and having been bullied were covariates. To examine differences for children with varied comorbid emotional and behavioral problems, relations were tested separately for children with asthma and behavior problems, children with asthma and anxiety, and children with asthma and depression.

RESULTS

Skills for making and keeping friends were positively related to flourishing of adolescents with current asthma for all three types of mental health concerns. The relationship between involvements in after-school activities was less clear-cut, as this predictor was not always positively related to flourishing.

CONCLUSIONS

Abilities to make and keep friends were related to flourishing, indicating that peer support is a resilience factor. Conversely, it was not clear that involvement in after-school activities was a resilience factor and more research about factors constituting successful after-school involvement for adolescents with asthma is needed. Future research, illuminating how social support from peers and involvement in activities promote flourishing will extend knowledge.

Rural-urban differences in social and emotional protective factors and their association with child health and flourishing

BACKGROUND

Children in rural communities experience higher mortality rates and less access to health care services than those in urban communities. Protective factors like social support also vary by geography, but their contribution to differences in child health is understudied. Understanding geographic variation in protective health factors could provide insight into their impact on health and guide future intervention strategies.

RESEARCH OBJECTIVE

To examine protective factors' association with child flourishing and child health status in rural and urban communities.

METHODS

Publicly available data from the National Survey of Children's Health, 2018-2021, with nonmissing geographic data (N = 150,493) were used to assess the relationship between protective factors and child flourishing and health by rurality. Multivariate survey-weighted probit models examined these relationships, adjusting for child and caregiver characteristics.

FINDINGS

More than a third of children were not flourishing, according to parental report. An estimated 62% of rural children were flourishing compared to 66% of urban children (P<0.001). Urban caregivers also were more likely to report better adult mental and physical health status. Nevertheless, rural children were reported to receive more social support than urban children, while their caregivers reported more emotional support and living in supportive and safe neighborhoods (P<0.001). Rural caregivers reported more support from places of worship and less from counselors/other mental health care providers than urban caregivers.

CONCLUSIONS

Despite higher reported caregiver emotional support and child social support, fewer rural children are flourishing. Health systems and community organizations able to leverage these existing social and emotional protective factors in rural communities could help close this gap.

The association between parent-child quality time and children's flourishing level

PURPOSE

Few studies have examined the association between parental quality time and flourishing measures in young children. This study explored the association between parental quality time and children's flourishing in a national sample of USA children 1-5 years of age.

DESIGN AND METHODS

A cross sectional study using data from the 2019-2020 National Survey of Children's Health (N = 17,855). Flourishing was measured with a composite score (values 0-4) derived from 4 questions on attachment with parent, resilience, learning, and contentment with life. Having all 4 items was optimal. Parent-child quality time per week was measured with 3 items: singing or storytelling, reading to child, and family meal with child; using a 4-point scale: 0 days, 1-3 days, 4-6 days, and every day/week. Multivariable logistic regression models were conducted to assess the odds of lower flourishing in SAS 9.4.

RESULTS

After controlling for confounding, only the lack of singing and storytelling were negatively associated with greater odds of lower levels of flourishing (0-2 items OR = 5.06, 95% CI 2.11-12.14; 3 items OR = 2.92, 95% CI 1.73-4.93).

CONCLUSIONS

Insufficient parent-child quality time is associated with lower flourishing levels. Fostering parental opportunities to engage in weekly quality time with their children should be a priority of child health programs seeking to improve child flourishing.

PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS

Nurses should provide guidance to parents on ways to nurture quality family time and promote children's psychosocial, environmental, and physical well-being. Nurses can advocate for programmatic and policy changes to ensure familial work/life balance and licensing/accreditation of all child centers.

A systematic review of adolescent flourishing

Traditionally, the study of well-being has been approached from the hedonic and eudaimonic perspectives. However, the last findings suggest that both aspects are complementary, giving place to an integrated conceptualization of well-being called flourishing. In spite of the constant increase of research around this construct, there is still little information regarding flourishing in adolescents. The objective of this study is to review the available literature on flourishing in adolescence in relation to its tie with other constructs, its study in different contexts and the way it has been operationalized. The selection of the studies was conducted in two phases. First, it was verified that the exclusion and selection criteria were met. Then, an evaluation of the quality of the pre-selected studies was carried out. The data were synthesized through the thematic synthesis method. For the results, 28 empirical studies were selected. Four thematic axes were identified: (a) Flourishing in different contexts, (b) Flourishing in regards to other results and positive psychological characteristics and/or their negative counterpart, (c) Flourishing and psychosocial vulnerability, and (d) indicators for the evaluation of flourishing. Suggestions are provided with the goal of consolidating the science of human flourishing.

Social media use and adolescents' well-being: A note on flourishing

Background

Several large-scale studies and reviews have reported both negative and positive associations of social media use with well-being, suggesting that the findings are more complex and need more nuanced study. Moreover, there is little or no exploration of how social media use in adolescence influences flourishing, a more all-encompassing construct beyond well-being, including six sub-domains (i.e., happiness, meaning and purpose, physical and mental health, character, close social relationships, and financial stability). This paper aims to fill this gap by understanding how adolescents might flourish through social media activities by fulfilling the basic needs pointed out by the Self-Determination Theory, i.e., relatedness, autonomy, and competence.

Methods

The study is drawn on cross-sectional data collected from 1,429 Swiss adolescents (58.8% females, M_age = 15.84, SD_age = 0.83) as part of the HappyB project in Spring 2022. Self-reported measures included the Harvard Adolescent Flourishing scale, positive and negative online social experiences, self-disclosure on social media, and social media inspiration. Control variables included, among others, self-esteem, ill-being, and personality.

Results

After applying Bonferroni's correction, results of the hierarchical regression analyses showed that positive social media experiences (β = 0.112, p < 0.001) and social media inspirations from others (β = 0.072, p < 0.001) and for others (β = 0.060, p = 0.003) were positively associated with flourishing. Flourishing was inversely associated with negative social media experiences (β = -0.076, p < 0.001). Among covariates, self-esteem (β = 0.350, p < 0.001), ill-being (β = -0.252, p < 0.001), perceived school environment (β = 0.138, p < 0.001), self-reported level of physical activity (β =0.109, p < 0.001), and perceived socio-economic status (β = -0.059, p = 0.001) were all related to flourishing. In contrast, gender, high school year, age, perceived stress, and personality (extraversion and neuroticism) were not.

Conclusion

Using a well-being framework to investigate social media use in adolescents is needed to go beyond the ill-being perspective. Our results align with the needs pointed out by the Self-Determination Theory. Carrying out social media activities in a way that promotes-rather than diminishes-flourishing should be included as an additional good habit influencing adolescents' development. We suggest that interventions aiming to foster adolescents' flourishing should include curricula aiming to promote a good use of social media through positive online social relationships and inspirational contents.

Perceived procedural justice and psychological flourishing among mental health professionals in Macao: a moderated mediation model

This study aimed to examine whether and how organizational factors (i.e., procedural justice) are associated with psychological flourishing, an optimal mental state. Path analysis was conducted among 195 Chinese mental health professionals (females = 69%; Mean age = 30 years) in Macao, and results showed that emotional exhaustion partially mediated the positive association between procedural justice and psychological flourishing, whereas emotion regulation significantly diminished the effects of procedural injustice on emotional exhaustion. Our findings highlight the emotional mechanisms underlying the influence of organizational procedures on employees' wellbeing, and wellness programs for enhancing employees' emotional regulation skills are recommended.

Supportive Neighborhoods, Family Resilience and Flourishing in Childhood and Adolescence

Flourishing is linked with health and well-being in childhood and adulthood. This study applied a promotive factors model to examine how neighborhood assets might benefit child and adolescent flourishing by promoting family resilience. Using data from the combined 2018 and 2019 National Survey of Children’s Health, structural equation models tested direct and indirect relationships between neighborhood physical environment, neighborhood social cohesion, family resilience, and flourishing among 18,396 children and 24,817 adolescents. After controlling for multiple covariates that may influence flourishing, the models supported that higher levels of neighborhood social cohesion were directly associated with higher levels of flourishing adolescents, and indirectly by positive associations with family resilience for both children and adolescents. No indirect effects between neighborhood physical environments and flourishing were supported by the data for either children or adolescents. However, neighborhood physical environments were positively associated with adolescent flourishing. Understanding social environmental factors that strengthen and enhance child and adolescent flourishing are critical toward designing prevention, intervention, and policy efforts that can build on the existing strengths of families and their communities.