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.

A Bibliometric Analysis of Positive Mental Health Research and Development in the Social Science Citation Index

Background:This study aimed to conduct a bibliometric analysis of positive mental health,focusing on citation performance,article title,abstract,author keywords,Keyword Plus,and their development trends.The novelty of this study is a pioneer within the field of positive mental health.Therefore,it delivered new ideas for researchers and practitioners who had concerns about positive mental health in terms of trends research which covered recommended articles and the research focus in recent years.Methods:The data were retrieved on 30 April 2024 from the Social Sciences Citation Index(SSCI)of Clarivate Analytics’Web of Science Core Collection for studies published between 1992 and 2023.Results:The distribution of keywords in the article title and keywords chosen by the authors were used to assess research trends.1391 documents in SSCI were found during the search;1221 of these were document-type“articles.”524 journals published these publications.The most frequently used keywords by the writers,according to the articles’analysis,are“depression,”“resilience,”“COVID-19,”“anxiety,”and“social support.”Kristin D.Neff wrote the most frequently cited paper in 2003.Most articles came from Europe(five countries),America(two countries),Asia(two countries),and Oceania(one country),and were published in English.The majority of the research in the field of positive mental health is conducted in Europe and America,two regions where English is the primary language.The main research topics in positive mental health were related to adolescents,children,and college students.Conclusion:Trends research through bibliometric analysis by using data from Web of Science Core Collection should be followed by manual inspection to avoid errors.Therefore,scientists need more careful data examination in bibliometric analysis.