Mental Health: mental well-being and children

Children

The Health Behaviours of School Children survey asks questions relating to mental health and well-being. Several relevant reports have been produced with data relating to mental health and well-being and links to some of these reports are provided below:

• HBSC Briefing Paper 10:Bullying: Health, Well-being and Risk Behaviours (121kB), 2004
• HBSC Briefing Paper 8: Bullying and fighting among schoolchildren in Scotland(129kB), 2004 
• HBSC Briefing Paper 5: How are Scotland's young people doing? (166kB) A cross-national perspective on physical and emotional well-being, 2004
• HBSC Briefing Paper 4: Mental Health and well-being in the context of school: (157kB) Young people in Scotland, 2004.
• HBSC Briefing Paper 2: Mental well-being among schoolchildren in Scotland: (125kB)age and gender patterns, trends and cross-national comparisons, 2003, 

The 2002 Scottish Schools Adolescent Lifestyle and Substance Use Survey (SALSUS) has also included questions on the following (not all were included in the 2004 survey):

• Body image (happiness, confidence self-esteem)
• Family relations
• Quality of parent-child relations
• Family and friends
• Social networks and social support/local identity
• Parental monitoring/measure of mutual trust
• Social relations - exposure to peer influence/support/ informal social network of peers
• Life satisfaction
• Satisfaction with school
• Class-mate support

The SALSUS national reports focus on the analysis of substance misuse data and describe associations between individual lifestyle factors and smoking, drinking and drug use but the 2002 local lifestyle reports include information on the above available for NHS Boards, Local Authorities and Drug and Alcohol Action Teams.