Making the best out of youth : the Improve the Youth project

Abstract

Adolescents' mental health determines their general health and their mental health as adults. Improve the Youth project (ITY) was created and implemented among Polish and Portuguese adolescents. The aim of the project was to investigate the well-being of Portuguese and Polish adolescents, and to evaluate differences between them in self-rated health, life satisfaction and perceived psychosomatic health. A mixed-method approach was applied. The quantitative part was based on Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) 2014 data, including adolescents aged 11-15 years (6026 in Portugal; 4545 in Poland). This study meets the issues raised by the HBSC results, regarding mental health in adolescence, and it is aimed to improve adolescents' social participation and active citizenship. In most study areas, findings in Poland were less favourable than in Portugal. The qualitative part was developed to recognize the main threats for adolescent's well-being. In this, they emphasised that every opportunity to talk about their feelings and needs resulted in improvement of their mental health. Elevated levels of stress were connected to environmental pressure and high expectations that they were often unable to cope with. Nervousness, perceiving that it was impossible to meet expectations, the desire to keep up with their peers, fatigue, and uncertainty of the future increased the feelings of frustration. The differences found between countries may be due to cultural roots, surfacing the relevance of assessing adolescents' mental health needs in the social context of family, school and peers. This study also aims to raise awareness among educators and stakeholders to the importance of youth engagement.