Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.24141/1/7/2/9
Changes in certain aspects of adolescent mental health during high school
Zlatka Kozjak Mikić
orcid.org/0000-0001-6187-6960
; The Zagreb Health School, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
Considering the risks of mental health, adolescence belongs to critical life periods. In addition to family context factors, factors related to school requirements are also of great importance for mental health. This paper analyzes data collected from 141 students of health programs during four years of their high school education. Negative automatic thoughts related to the fear of failure and encouraging automatic thoughts during learning in exam periods at the end of the school year have been assessed. The main goal of the study was to test the direction and contribution of positive and negative automatic thoughts in predicting long-term emotional outcomes, that is, the level of emotional distress at the end of high school. In addition to descriptive statistics, we used multiple regression analysis to analyze the results. Depending on the year of education, about 16% of participants have above-average frequent negative automatic thoughts during learning, 13 to 18% have positive automatic thoughts, while 16 to 18% participants have above-average levels of general emotional distress. The results showed that in the examination periods at the end of the school year, 15% of participants had an above-average elevated level of emotional distress during several years, as well as at the end of high school. Negative automatic thoughts related to the fear of failure while learning at the end of the second and third grade are good predictors of emotional distress at the end of high school, thus suggesting the importance of negative cognitive assessments for long-term negative emotional outcomes. The predictability of positive thoughts in predicting long-term emotional outcomes has not been confirmed. The results are discussed in the context of Lazarus’ theory of stress and coping and Beck’s cognitive model of dysfunctional and maladaptive behavior.
Keywords
adolescents; mental health; automatic thoughts; emotional distress
Hrčak ID:
256379
URI
Publication date:
23.4.2021.
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