The medicine use and corresponding subjective health complaints among adolescents, a cross-national survey.

BACKGROUND: Medicine use among children and young people is under-researched. Studies that investigated cross-national patterns in adolescents' medicine use practice are rare. This study aims to investigate adolescents' medicine use for corresponding health complaints in Europe and USA. METHODS: Nationally representative samples of adolescents from 19 countries and regions in Europe and USA completed an anonymous, standardised questionnaire as part of the Health Behaviour in School-aged Children 2005/2006 survey. The prevalence of health complaints and medicine use were determined. The influence of the frequency of medicine use, age, gender and country of residence, on the likelihood of medicine use was assessed using multilevel multivariate logistic regression, with separate analyses for boys and girls. RESULTS: Both health complaints and medicine use were common among adolescents. Medicine use was strongly associated with the frequency of health complaints. The prevalence of both medicine use and health complaints was higher among girls than boys. Boys and girls with weekly health complaints were both similarly likely to report elevated rates of medicine use. CONCLUSIONS: The findings indicated that adolescents who report more frequent recurrent health complaints are also more likely to report more frequent medicine use for their health complaints. Adolescent boys with weekly health complaints have the same risk of medicine use as girls with weekly health complaints. The importance of educating school-aged children to interpret their bodily feelings and complaints and to use medicines appropriately is of high priority.

The adolescents, life context, and school project: youth voice and civic participation.

The Adolescents, Life Context, & School project was developed in a suburban, residential area of Padova, Italy, and involved three classes of 12-year-old children. Across three months, children observed, documented, and talked about their own life contexts in order to voice problems to decision makers. Both teachers and council members played key roles in supporting the project and the children's work. Limited quantitative results showed an increase in reported neighborhood civic responsibility compared to a control group of students. Qualitative evaluation results demonstrated strong interest. The involvement by teachers, local government, and students in the project led to real actions and improvements in the neighborhood and school and to the creation of an official youth affairs council. The program provides a model for service-learning and organized student civic engagement.

Cross-national associations between parent and peer communication and psychological complaints.

OBJECTIVES: To assess whether or not communication with parents and with peers is related to experiencing psychological complaints in an attempt to explore the hypotheses of continuity and compensation or moderation between contexts. METHODS: Questions on communication with their parents and peers, as well as on the frequency with which they experience psychological complaints were answered by 200,857 adolescents from 36 countries. RESULTS: A cluster analysis detected four groups of adolescents. Those with better communication in both social contexts were the ones showing less psychological complaints. Moreover, we have found (using a regression analysis) that good communication with peers does not improve their experience of psychological complaints if the communication with parents is not good. CONCLUSIONS: We conclude that our findings are consistent with the continuity hypothesis and against the compensating or moderating one.

Adolescent place attachment, social capital, and perceived safety: a comparison of 13 countries.

In adolescence, children become increasingly independent and autonomous, and spend more time in neighborhood settings away from home. During mid-to-late adolescence, youth often become more critical about the place they live. Their attachment to home and even community may decrease as they explore and develop new attachments to other specific places. The aim of this study is to understand how 15-year-old students from 13 countries perceive their local neighborhood area (place attachment, social capital and safety), and how these different community cognitions are interrelated. We hypothesize that their place attachment predicts safety, and that the relationship is mediated in part by social capital. Result show that, despite cross-cultural differences in neighborhood perceptions, the proposed theoretical model fits robustly across all 13 countries.

[Personal resources and nursing work: a research on coping strategies and job satisfaction]. / Risorse personali e lavoro infermieristico: una ricerca sulle strategie di coping e la soddisfazione lavorativa.

INTRODUCTION: The coping (ability to face a difficult situation), is an essential resource for nurses, because it increases the effective functioning in the working environment, job satisfaction and individual level of wellness. AIM: The aim of this study is to explore the relationship between coping strategies and job satisfaction. METHODS: A self report questionnaire was administered to all the nurses working in health services and hospitals of Padua province and to free lance nurses members of the College of Nurses, to collect information on coping strategies and job satisfaction. RESULTS: 2264 questionnaires were returned (71%). Active coping strategies are adopted mainly from older nurses while avoiding strategies are prevalent among younger. An association was observed between job satisfaction and active coping strategies, aimed at problem solving: active strategies increase job satisfaction while avoiding strategies descrease it. CONCLUSIONS: Individual coping strategies implemented to face difficult situations are associated to job satisfaction.