qualitative study of adolescents in the UK, the researchers found that the increased anxiety among young people related to future orientation, social media use, education, austerity, and normalisation of mental distress and self-harm. 270 A second issue concerned the use of health care statistics as a measure of morbidity. The use of psychiatric treatment and prescription of psychoactive drugs among Swedish adolescents have also increased, but this does not necessarily reflect the true picture. A third issue is the on-going medicalisation of symptoms and complaints. There are also great possibilities to build research on earlier longitudinal studies which can be repeated, and Nordic comparisons are possible as such studies are available in all Nordic countries. However, this requires collaborative research beyond disciplinary and national borders. A constructive approach to these questions is reviewing the available evidence and doing research to fill the knowledge gaps. It is important to understand how young people think and perceive mental health, 271 which can be investigated by think-aloud methods. 272 Moreover, it may be important to have a gender perspective, as the differences between girls and boys are very large. 273,274 However, it is important to use the full potential of modern research approaches. A prerequisite for this is that quantitative and qualitative researchers interact and facilitate a synergetic transdisciplinary development. The challenge from the research questions which relate to school achievement, social inequality, and health development calls for peace in the so-called paradigm war: a mixed-methods approach is fruitful and beneficial.275,276
What can we do? Supporting school completion is a way of reducing health inequalities. Every year there are a lot of young people who have not Bell, J., Reid, M., Dyson, J., Schlosser, A., & Alexander, T. (2019). There’s just huge anxiety: Ontological security, moral panic, and the decline in young people’s mental health and well-being in the UK. Qualitative Research in Medicine & Healthcare, 3, 87–97. 271 Johansson, A., Brunnberg, E., & Eriksson, C. (2007). Adolescent girls’ and boys’ perceptions of mental health. Journal of Youth Studies, 10(2), 183–202. 272 Joffer, J., Jerdén, L., Öhman, A., & Flacking, R. (2016). Exploring self-rated health among adolescents: A think-aloud study. BMC Public Health, 16(1), 1–10. 273 Landstedt, E., Aspelund, K., & Gillander Gådin, K. (2009). Understanding adolescent mental health: The influence of social processes, doing gender and gendered power relations. Sociology of Health & Illness, 31(7), 962–978. 274 MacLean, A., Sweeting, H., & Hunt, K. (2010). ‘Rules’ for boys, ‘guidelines’ for girls: Gender differences in symptom reporting during childhood and adolescence. Social Science and Medicine, 70, 597–604. 275 Creswell, J. W. (2015). A concise introduction to mixed methods research. Los Angeles: Sage. 276 Lund, T. (2012). Combining qualitative and quantitative approaches: Some arguments for mixed methods research. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 56(2), 155–165. 270
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