Determinants of Positive Mental Health in Adolescents–A Cross-Sectional Study on Relationships between Positive Mental Health, Self-Esteem, Character Strengths and Social Inclusion

Adolescence is a crucial time period with especial vulnerability for development of mental health problems.Growing interest is focusing on the determinants of positive mental health in order to find the key concepts that could be influenced in the promotion of mental well-being of adolescents.In this study we aim to explore the relations between self-esteem,character strengths and experience of social inclusion as determinants of adolescents’positive mental health controlled for selected sociodemographic background factors.The study population(n=195)consisted of comprehensive school students who filled in an electronic questionnaire of adolescent’s mental well-being in Fall 2019.The questionnaire included measures of Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale(WEMWBS),VIA Youth-measure 96,Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale and Experience of Social Inclusion Scale.The methods included group comparisons and General Linear Model computed by SPSS 24.0.The strongest association was found between positive mental health and self-esteem(β=0.789,p<0.001),followed by character strengths of hope and kindness and experience of social inclusion.Interestingly,family’s socioeconomic factors did not associate significantly with positive mental health in the final statistical model.In terms of our results,it seems that self-esteem,character strengths and experience of social inclusion might have stronger association with adolescents’mental well-being than family’s socioeconomic determinants.Therefore,it should be discussed whether psychological determinants overcome the individual effect of poor socioeconomic status as factors that influence positive mental health.Further studies are needed to establish these results more firmly.

Disability and Social Inclusion:The Blind Songstress in Early Twentieth-Century Guangzhou

This article examines disability as a contested notion of social inclusion by focusing on the blind songstress(guji)in early twentieth-century Guangzhou(Canton).Through personal memoirs,the print press,and institutional documents,this article reconstructs the social life of guyji as their experiences intersected with professional community,workplace,and charity.First,I show that the adoption of blind girls from families into training guilds managed by veteran guji was a chosen kinship strategy for blind women since the late Qing period.Second,the commercial sponsorship of guji following the establishment of the Republic not only expanded working opportunities for blind women but also exposed,their vulnerability to male-dominated entertainment spheres.Third,the reformist critique of guji as an inappropriate form of sex-related consumption pushed the nascent military government to collaborate with foreign missionaries in“rescuing”blind girls from their professional households.The experiences of guji thus reveal competing ideas of what qualified a disabled person to become a member of society at the beginning of the twentieth century,as work-based inclusion gave way to charitable inclusion as an outcome of shifting social attitudes toward the employment of women with disabilities.

Increasing Social Inclusion for the Children of Migrant Workers in Shanghai,China:A Four-Year Longitudinal Study of a Non-Governmental,Volunteer-Led,After-School Program

In Shanghai,a mega-city of approximately 24.15 million people(Shanghai Municipal Statistics Bureau,2015,“Art.13”),the population of migrant workers continues to increase.According to the Shanghai Municipal Statistics Bureau(2015),as of 2015,9.81 million residents did not have household registration papers.Of these,70%,or 6.87 million were migrant workers(“Art.13”).The researcher relied on qualitative research techniques to explore the outcomes of an after-school program for the children of migrant workers.The study took place over a four-year period with data being collected throughout.Keeping in mind methodology limitations,the analysis affirmed the success of the hoped for outcomes of the program.

Women in a Urban Zone Experience Against Covid

The two-year follow-up as participating observer at the Urban Zone training group and WhatsApp related platform,took place in Roseto degli Abruzzi-a small seaside town in Abruzzi,Italy,during the pandemic crisis for Covid-19.This experience has been a way to keep training despite the pandemic confinement,but it has also become a kind of self-help and therapeutic group.The conditions for its implementation are linked to the impossibility of any indoor sports and also the fact that the online lessons were not very successful.Urban Zone is an outdoor activity that can be carried out in the urban context,whose peculiarity is the opening of the gyms training to the urban or natural outdoor space,through wireless headphones(so people could respect the 2-meter social distancing implied in the prevention measures for Covid-19)in which the music and the trainer instruction can be heard.