Estonian teenage girls have steepest progress through adolescence, which comes with a cost for mental health and well-being, the new HBSC report reveals. The international survey focused on teenage mental health and well-being among 11-, 13- and 15-year-olds across 44 countries and regions in Europe, central Asia and Canada.
The WHO’s European office published the HBSC (Health Behavior in School-aged Children) report, which shows the status of adolescent mental health and well-being across a range of indicators, including gender, age and social inequality. The report shows an alarming development – a decline in the mental health of teenage girls. In Estonia, the situation is particularly dire.
The HBSC investigation is conducted every four years. Multiple health complaints have increased from 33 percent in 2014 to 36 percent in 2018 and 44 percent in 2022 presumably as a result of the many challenges adolescents have faced over the past four years, including the pandemic, accelerating climate change and increasing costs of living.
Acute loneliness: measuring mental health and depression risk factors
Sixteen percent of teenagers across the survey, on average, reported feeling lonely “most of the time” or “always” during the past year. The percentages nearly doubled between 11 and 15 years of age. The gender difference was consistent across all countries/regions and age groups, with girls reporting higher levels of loneliness than boys, with the largest gender differences emerging at age 15. In some countries and regions, the prevalence of loneliness among 15-year-old girls was three times that of boys.
Estonia ranks fourth after the United Kingdom, Poland and Belgium (French) in terms of the percentage of 15-year-old girls who reported being lonely “most of the time” or “always” in the past year. Moreover, Estonia leads all other countries in the survey in terms of the sharp increase between the percentage of 11-year-olds who have reported severe loneliness (14 percent) and the percentage of 15-year-olds (36 percent), who have reported the same.
In Estonia, at the age of 11, only 10.6 percent of girls living in rural areas report feeling severe loneliness, which is a third less than in urban centers; however, among 15-year-olds in rural areas, the percentage matched that of urban residents. This percentage is highest, 43.6 percent, in Western Estonia and the islands compared to other regions in Estonia, where it amounts to about 32 percent.
While there is no difference between Estonian- and Russian-speaking boys aged 15 and older, the percentage of Estonian-speaking girls who report acute loneliness increases steeply and significantly from 12.5 percent at age 11 to 38 percent at age 15. The same transition for Russian-speaking girls is less sharp, from 17.8 percent to 27.7 percent.
In Western Estonia and the islands, the percentage of girls who have experienced depressive episodes in the past year increased from 21.6 percent at age 11 to 62 percent at age 15, which is the sharpest increase and highest number in Estonia. In particular, Russian-speaking youth, both boys and girls, report higher prevalence of depression across all ages.
In the past year, 16.1 percent of 15-year-old boys and 33.6 percent of 15-year-old girls have considered suicide. There are no distinctions in this regard between urban and rural residents, nor are there any regional differences across Estonia. However, there is a significant difference between Estonian-speakers and speakers of other languages: a higher proportion of Estonian-speaking 15-year-old girls, 35.6 percent, reported having suicidal thoughts than Russian-speaking 15-year-old girls, at 25.9 percent.
Also, young people were asked how often over the last two weeks they had: felt cheerful and in good spirits; calm and relaxed; active and vigorous; woken up feeling fresh and rested; and felt their life was filled with things that interested them. Response options ranged from all the time to at no time. Estonia’s 15-year-olds had one of the lowest scores and rank fourth-from-last across all 44 countries, after Poland, Slovenia, Italy and the United Kingdom.
In terms of life satisfaction and self-esteem Estonian young people are in the middle of 44 countries. More positive trends are visible in the self-efficacy of Estonian youth – young people in Estonia, both boys and girls, are significantly more confident in solving problems and achieving goals compared to the HBSC average; however the gender difference is also apparent in this parameter and it grows with age.
“Both international and national results in Estonia provide the opportunity not only to compare results, but also to create more tailored mental health interventions and support for our young people. In Estonia, the emphasis should be on early intervention in the school environment,” Leila Oja, head of the HBSC Estonia study and researcher at the TAI, said.
The Health Behavior in School-aged Children (HBSC) study is a large school-based survey carried out every four years in collaboration with the WHO Regional Office for Europe. The results of the latest survey are based on the opinions of nearly 280,000 11-15 year olds from 44 countries. In Estonia, the survey was carried out by the National Institute for Health Development (TAI) from November 2021 to March 2022 and involved nearly 5,000 primary school pupils from 100 schools.
Source: ERR.ee
