To Örebro University

Background/Objective: This study examined the role of different psychological coping mechanisms in mental and physical health during the initial phases of the COVID-19 crisis with an emphasis on meaning-centered coping.

Method: A total of 11,227 people from 30 countries across all continents participated in the study and completed measures of psychological distress (depression, stress, and anxiety), loneliness, well-being, and physical health, together with measures of problem-focused and emotion-focused coping, and a measure called the Meaning-centered Coping Scale (MCCS) that was developed in the present study. Validation analyses of the MCCS were performed in all countries, and data were assessed by multilevel modeling (MLM).

Results: The MCCS showed a robust one-factor structure in 30 countries with good test-retest, concurrent and divergent validity results. MLM analyses showed mixed results regarding emotion and problem-focused coping strategies. However, the MCCS was the strongest positive predictor of physical and mental health among all coping strategies, independently of demographic characteristics and country-level variables.

Conclusions: The findings suggest that the MCCS is a valid measure to assess meaning-centered coping. The results also call for policies promoting effective coping to mitigate collective suffering during the pandemic.

Climate change is among the most serious threats facing humanity today. What choices we make concerning food, travelling, and energy use at an aggregated level have a great impact on if we are going to be able to handle the climate threat. In this regard, one important stakeholder group is young people. Late adolescence/emerging adulthood is a transition phase that could be important regarding breaking with unsustainable norms and habits created in the childhood home, but also in going beyond oversimplified black-and-white thinking about sustainability issues. In this questionnaire study we explore factors that are hypothesized to explain climate friendly food choices among Swedish late adolescents (n=480). Making climate friendly choices is difficult due to the inherent complexity of sustainability issues, which could evoke ambivalence. Earlier research about energy saving and recycling among young people shows that these behaviors are often negatively related to ambivalent attitudes. In addition, qualitative studies indicate that young people use negative or positive strategies (from an engagement perspective) to deal with their ambivalence. These strategies relation to behavior has, however, not been investigated in quantitative studies. The aim is to explore if ambivalence and strategies to cope are associated with climate friendly food choices and if these effects remains when controlling for more well-known predictors of food choices such as social influence from parents. Preliminary analyses show that ambivalent attitudes and negative strategies have significant negative relations, while positive strategies have a positive relation to climate friendly food choices. In a regression analysis, the influence from ambivalence disappears when including positive and negative strategies. When more well-known predictors are included in hierarchical regression models the effect from positive strategies still remains and it is the most potent predictor. These results are discussed in relation to theories about ambivalence and post-formal thinking in emerging adulthood.

This article focuses on the existential aspects of global climate change. Pessimism regarding this problem seems to be particularly common in emerging adulthood, that is, the late teens and the twenties. Research also shows that many in this age group feel ambivalent about different pro-environmental behaviors and that ambivalence is a disincentive to behave in an environmentally friendly way. The aim of this article is foremost theoretical, with a focus on living with ambivalence in a more or less “unsustainable” society that at the same time puts pressure on the individual to live in a sustainable manner. Deploying existential theories and theories about ambivalence, the article argues that because of the complexity of climate change we cannot avoid ambivalence. Therefore, we should not focus foremost on getting rid of this feeling. Instead, it is important to look at how young people think about and cope with their ambivalence. An earlier qualitative study indicates that there are “negative” and “positive” ways to handle ambivalence seen from a behavior perspective. We illustrate this with data from a quantitative pilot study with university students (n=261) about climate-friendly food choices. The results show that ambivalence and negative thinking patterns are negatively related to climate-friendly food choices, while the variable, positive thinking patterns, is significantly positively associated with, and is the most potent predictor, of these food choices.

Furthermore, a theoretical model where ambivalence leads to negative thinking patterns, which then leads to less climate-friendly food choices, was supported in a mediation analysis. It is concluded that it is vital to discuss these thinking patterns in a critical way in order to promote coping strategies that can help the young to face their ambivalence and be active in spite of it. In this regard, from a developmental psychological perspective emerging adulthood is an ideal age period.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Stress and stress-related mental health complaints are common and increasing among adolescents, especially girls. Identifying typical sources of stress as well as central intervention targets is an important effort in the development of effective prevention and treatment protocols. This study investigated worry as potential mediator in the development of mental health problems in response to common stressors in adolescence. We also examined to what sources adolescents ascribe their stress over the years from the 7th through the 9th grade.

DESIGN: Prospective cohort study.

METHODS: Self-reported subjective stressor load, worry, anxiety and depressive symptoms were assessed in a sample of Swedish 7th graders (N = 1137; 46% girls, mean age 13.2) with follow-up assessments one and two years later.

RESULTS: School was the most common source of stress across all time-points, with girls reporting considerable more stress than boys. Worry mediated the relationship between overall stressor load and depressive symptoms and anxiety over time and was not moderated by gender.

CONCLUSIONS: Worry may be an important target in stress prevention and efforts to prevent stress-related problems would benefit from focusing on early adolescence as especially school stress is already relatively common in grade 7.

Background: Stressor experience is an important topic of research concerning adolescent health and ill-health. For this, valid and reliable measures of adolescent stress are needed. The Adolescent Stress Questionnaire 2 was developed to tap into stressor domains specific for adolescence. Psychometric evaluations in Australian and European samples have indicated adequate psychometric properties. However, the ASQ-2 is quite extensive, which may render its use in large cohort studies, where several aspects of adolescent health are investigated, inconvenient and problematic.

Objective: To evaluate the psychometric properties of a short version of the ASQ-2 (ASQ-S) in terms of construct validity and factorial invariance across gender.

Method: The ASQ-2 was translated into Swedish and items were retained from nine of the ten scales based on factor loadings. One scale (stress of emerging adult responsibilities) was removed entirely due to low internal consistency and variance explained. The remaining 27 items were piloted and then included in an ongoing 5-year longitudinal study involving the participation of all students in the 7th and 8th grade in public schools from three Swedish municipalities (N = 2768, 47.5 % girls, mean age 13.64 years). For this study data from the first and second wave was used.

Results: A nine factor Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) showed a good fit to the data and invariance across sexes was supported. The nine scales correlated positively with depressive symptoms, anxiety and worry and negatively with self-esteem. Girls reported higher stress levels than boys in eight of the nine scales. Stressors related to peer pressure predicted reported levels of anxiety and worry one year later, whereas stressors related to romantic relationships predicted depressive symptoms.

Conclusions: Overall this study suggests that the ASQ-S could be a valid measure of adolescent stressor experience and psychometrically equivalent to the full ASQ-2.

Previous research has indicated that cognitive emotion regulation strategies contribute to the development and maintenance of emotional problems in adults and adolescents. However, there is a lack of longitudinal research with adolescent samples, hence knowledge of exactly how these strategies influence the development of emotional problems in adolescence is sparse. This study investigated maladaptive cognitive emotion regulation (cognitive avoidance and repetitive negative thinking) as a potential mediator in the development of anxiety and depressed mood over time in adolescence. Self-reported depressed mood, anxiety, and cognitive emotion regulation strategies were assessed during school hours in a sample of Swedish 10th graders (N=149; 53% girls), with follow-up assessments one and two years later. Repetitive negative thinking and cognitive avoidance formed a unidimensional factor of cognitive emotion regulation. Cognitive emotion regulation was found to mediate the development of both anxiety and depressed mood over time, lending support to the previous findings that cognitive emotion regulation strategies such as cognitive avoidance and repetitive negative thinking might act as transdiagnostic mechanisms in the development of emotional symptoms in adolescence. This suggests that maladaptive forms of cognitive emotion regulation could be important targets in prevention and treatment of emotional problems in adolescence.

Objective: Adolescence is a time of change during which several health problems, such as pain problems, increase. Psychosocial mechanisms involved in this development, such as interpersonal stressors and worry, are still understudied, especially longitudinally. The first aim of this study was to investigate the prevalence of musculoskeletal pain in Swedish adolescents between the ages 13 and 15 using pain grades. The second aim was to study the role of peer-related stress, worry, and gender in the development of musculoskeletal pain problems over time.

Methods: Adolescents in 18 public schools were followed from 7th to 9th grade (N=1181) and answered selfreport questionnaires at three time points. Prevalence was assessed at all three time points and a moderated mediation analysis investigated if peer-related stress in 7th grade predicted musculoskeletal pain two years later and if this relationship was mediated by worry in 8th grade. Gender was entered as a moderator.

Results: In 7th grade, 8.4% of adolescents reported musculoskeletal pain with some functional impairment. In 8th and 9th grade around 10% of adolescents reported musculoskeletal pain problems, with girls reporting a higher prevalence than boys. Peer-related stress in 7th grade predicted musculoskeletal pain problems in 9th grade, mediated by worry in 8th grade. The mediation was moderated by gender: peer-related stress predicted worry for girls, but not for boys.

Conclusion: Peer-related stress and worry seem to be involved in the development of pain over time. These factors should therefore be targeted in preventative interventions and during treatment.

Stress and stress-related mental health problems such as anxiety and depressive symptoms are common in adolescents and seem to be increasing, especially in mid- to late-adolescent girls. Although adolescence, as a period of rapid growth and profound change, is often marked by an increase in normal stressors (e.g. conflicts with parents, fitting in with peers, increased academic demands), most adolescents do not develop more persis-tent problems with stress. To be able to develop effective preventive interventions there is a need to understand both what adolescents are ascribing their stress to, how different stressor domains relate to outcomes, and why some adolescents go on to develop stress-related mental health problems while others do not.          

This dissertation aimed to answer some of these questions by investigating the role of cognitive avoidance and repetitive negative thinking (RNT) in the development of stress-related mental health problems (Study I & III). It also aimed to develop and validate a shortened version of a questionnaire designed to measure stressor load within different life domains in adolescence (Study II). Findings show that the shortened version of the Adolescents Stress Questionnaire seems to be a valid measure of stressor load within different domains in adolescence. School-related stressors were the most prevalent sources of stress, but social stressors seem to have a stronger link to increases in mental health symptoms. Also, adolescents who report higher levels of distress and stressor load tend to increase their engagement in cognitive avoidance and RNT over time which in turn predicts further increases in mental health symptoms. This suggests that cognitive avoidance and RNT may be important mechanisms in the development of stress-related mental health problems in adoles-cence.

Det är inte antalet stressorer i sig som gör att ungdomar utvecklar ohälsa. Nyckeln är hur dessa hanteras, emotionsreglering. Utifrån den hypotesen studerar Maria tillfors, professor i psykologi, ida Flink, lektor och forskare i psykologi, samt Malin Anniko, doktorand i psykologi, samtliga tillhörande forskargruppen CHAMP vid Örebro universitet, utvecklingen av hälso-psykologiska problem bland tonåringar.