Abstract :
[en] Educational Objectives: Our results provide knowledge about a wide range of deleterious factors associated with mental and physical illnesses and have to be monitored in early adolescence.Purpose: To assess the associations between mental and physical illnesses, and with socioeconomic factors, alcohol/tobacco/cannabis/hard drugs uses, low school-performance, lack of sports/physical activity, obesity, sustained physical/verbal violence, sexual abuse, involvement in violence, and suicide ideation among boys and girls in early adolescents.Methods: The sample included 1,559 middle-school students from north-eastern France (mean age 13.5, SD 1.3), who completed a self-administered questionnaire including gender, birth date, father’s occupation, parents’ education, nationality, family structure, income, last-30-day alcohol/tobacco/cannabis/hard drugs uses, low-school-performance (last-trimester-grade<10/20), lifetime sustained physical/verbal violence (20-item scale), lifetime sexual abuse, lifetime involvement in violence (11-item scale), last-12-month suicide ideation, and social relationship, living environment, mental and physical illnesses (measured with the four WHOQoL-Bref domains, score<10th percentiles). Data were analyzed using logistic regression models.Results: Mental and physical illnesses affected respectively 14.4% and 9.7% of adolescents. They were strongly linked: gender-age-adjusted odds ratio gaOR 7.07. They were linked with most socioeconomic factors: female (vs. male, gaORs 1.79 and 1.67), increasing age (1.25 and 1.28, per year), reconstructed family (2.25 and 2.34, vs. intact family), separated/divorced parents (2.46 and 2.35), non-significant (ns) for single-parent, other family categories (3.36 and 2.36), craftsman/tradesman/firm-head offspring (1.70 and 1.70, vs. manager/professional offspring), intermediate-professional offspring (1.84 and 1.70), manual-worker offspring (1.54 (ns) and 2.30), unemployed/retired offspring (2.88 and 3.11), European immigrants (1.39 (ns) and 2.28, vs. French), non-European immigrants (1.32 (ns) and 3.29), insufficient income (1.76 and 1.72). Mental and physical illnesses also related to low-school-performance (gaORs 2.13 and 3.80), alcohol use (1-5 times: ns; 6+ times: 3.85 and 2.23), tobacco use (1-5 times: 2.67 and 3.30; 6+ cigarettes/day: 4.41 and 3.82), cannabis use (1-5 times: 1.91 (ns) and 2.25; 6+ times: 2.55 and 2.06), hard drugs use (4.50 and 4.05), no regular sports/physical activity (2.09 and 3.49), obesity (2.00 and 1.68), sexual abuse (8.25 and 6.22), suicide ideation (10.3 and 5.61), physical/verbal violence (score 1-3: 1.37 and 1.42; score 4+: 3.08 and 2.76, vs. score 0), involvement in violence (score 1-5: 2.44 and 2.05; score 6+: 4.86 and 5.70, vs. score 0), altered social relationship (4.16 and 8.95), and altered living environment (9.59 and 11.7).Conclusion: This study has achieved our aims to identify factors associated with mental and physical illnesses in early adolescence. These original findings provided knowledge which may help public policy promoting adolescent mental and physical health.
