Adolescent Health Management

The present state of affairs of adolescent health status clearly shows that the condition of today's youth has significantly deteriorated as revealed by severe malnutrition, poor reproductive health, high aggression, increased depression, increased suicidal rates, drug use, substance abuse, etc., which are the clear indications of the challenges that adolescents are facing. No doubt that they are at risk because they lack social support to seek accurate information and services. In such a scenario, there is an urgent need to provide today's youth with new set of ways and systems to deal with the changing demands of life. It is essential that the adolescents be helped to develop skills inherently to handle a wide variety of choices, changes, and the stressors. It calls for a need of life skill education for adolescents so as to enable them to develop psycho-social competencies and interpersonal skills which help them to make informed decisions, communicate effectively, and develop coping and self-management skills so as to enable them to lead a healthy and productive life.

Self-care challenges in adolescents: a comprehensive literature review

BackgroundAdolescence is the period of accepting self-care responsibility. Many severe diseases that cause early mortality are rooted in adolescence. Hence, adolescence is the definitive time for preventive interventions such as self-care behaviors. In addition to the benefits of self-care behaviors, evidence shows that adolescents face barriers in performing self-care behaviors.ObjectiveThe aim of the current study to review the self-care challenges for adolescents.MethodsDatabases such as Google Scholar, ScienceDirect, PubMed, Web of Science, Scientific Information Database and Scopus were searched to extract papers published from 1994 to 2016 based on the inclusion criterion. The inclusion criterion was English language papers from famous authors on self-care behaviors in adolescents.ResultsThe results of the current study showed that adolescents face cultural (two subcategories, beliefs and convictions, knowledge), socio-economic (five subcategories, family, healthcare providers, peers, social support, economic status) and personal (three subcategories, mental health, gender, ethnicity) challenges.ConclusionsSelf-care behaviors in adolescents are influenced by biological, psychological, economic and social factors. As this is a multifactorial process, people who deal with adolescents should have enough knowledge regarding adolescent health status and also learn how to perceive the role of culture in self-care behaviors of the adolescents.

Life satisfaction among European American, African American, Chinese American, Mexican American, and Dominican American adolescents

This study examined contextual and personality factors and their relation to perceived life satisfaction among adolescents in five sociocultural groups. Variations in the contribution of specific predictors were noted for the five groups, but no one factor accounted for a large amount of variance in any group. Among the most consistent predictors were marital status, self-efficacy beliefs, and adolescent health status. Somewhat surprisingly, neither the amount of family conflict, adolescent academic achievement, nor observed socioemotional support from parents was strongly correlated with life satisfaction. The effect of study variables on adolescent quality of life was dependent upon other variables in the analysis. For example, considerate behaviour on the part of the adolescent was suppressed by task-orientation.