engleski

Mental health promotion: correlates of subjective wellbeing of adolescents in Croatia

Aim of this paper is to present a study of characteristics of subjective wellbeing of high- school youth in Croatia, in order to contribute to rarely researched topic in Croatian terms and to participate in international debate. Goal of the presented study is to examine how subjective well- being relates with meaning in life and symptoms of internalized disorders. Current state of the art in the field has already determined that life satisfaction is an outcome correlated with other intra and inter-personal outcomes, such as mental health and self-efficacy while one of the core components of wellbeing is meaning in life. This study focused on assessing dimensions of quality of life and specific characteristics of youth that included demographics, short questionnaire of meaning in life and internalized symptoms. Study sample involved 639 adolescents from Croatian capital high schools from different levels of education, with an average age of 17.4 years. Participants of the study were assessed with „Describing Your Life“, Youth Quality of Life instrument – Short form (YQOL-SF) (Patrick and Edwards, 2013) and The Meaning in Life Questionnaire (Steger et al., 2006). Results have shown that male participants see their quality of life higher than female while religious beliefs and active participation in hobby are relatedwith both higher quality of life and higher meaning in life. Internalized symptoms were found connected with lower quality of life and with higher dimension of search for meaning. This study has indicated that investment in positive mental health of youth and positive behaviour of adolescents can lead to better quality of life and overall, more positive mental health.

quality of life; mental health promotion; adolescents; meaning in life

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