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Page: << Prev | 1 | 2 The study also found that a teen's mental state and behavior were mutually influential. A teen who predicted a short lifespan, for instance, during an early interview was more likely to engage in subsequent risky behavior, and teens who engaged in risky behavior throughout the first year of the study were more likely to develop a pessimistic view of their future.
Borowsky suggested that efforts to prevent such a cycle of skewed perceptions and risky behavior among teens should focus on factors critical to instilling youthful optimism.
"We know that schools matter, and homes and parents matter," she said. "The concept of parents and family connectedness is so important with youth: having fun with your family and having parents you can communicate with and who tell you they love you. And having schools that create a climate where students feel connected and safe is very important. Positive media messages also play a role. These are all things that might prevent the development of a pessimistic view among youth."
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Freya Sonenstein, a professor and director of the Center for Adolescent Health Promotion and Disease Prevention at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University, said that addressing the perceptual problems highlighted in the study requires both one-on-one counseling and a recognition of those larger societal issues that could be driving adolescent optimism downward.
"Particularly where there's a high concentration of people who live in poverty -- often minority youth living in blighted neighborhoods with very high violence rates and drug use -- this kind of finding is certainly not surprising," Sonenstein said. "All you have to do is look around in the city of Baltimore, where I am myself, to understand why."
"So it's important to think about strategies -- intervention programs like the ones we have that work with kids around mental health issues -- to get kids to be more optimistic," she said. "And it's also very important to have physicians and other clinicians recognize that these expectations of an early death as a marker for high-risk behavior."
"But you also have to dig down a little deeper and look at the structural situation that make kids lose optimistic in the first place," Sonenstein said. "That's equally important."
More information
The U.S. National Institute of Mental Health has more on adolescent mental health.
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