Current perspectives on adolescent mental health: within-individual, time trends and cross-national differences

There is no health without mental health.

The foundation of mental health is largely laid in adolescence, and more than half of adult mental health disorders have their onset before the age of 14. Today’s adolescents (i.e.

Generation Z; the Zoomers, born between 1997 and 2015) are experiencing worse mental health than the preceding generation (i.e. the Millennials, born between 1981 and 1996).

However, there is limited evidence on the specific longitudinal (within-individual) trajectories of mental health (e.g. the dynamic between subjective well-being and psychopathology as based on the Dual-Factor Model of mental health), as well as international differences in the profiles of the Dual-Factor mental health model.

We also need better evidence on the predictors of change over time both at the individual (e.g. family relationships, school factors) and country level (i.e. income inequality; gender inequality) in the trends in adolescent mental health.

The action’s main Research Objectives are 1) to investigate within-individual changes in adolescent mental health, and 2) to test cross-national variation and trends in population-level adolescent mental health across 45 European countries.

The action will employ an interdisciplinary approach based on a 3-way knowledge transfer between the ER, the Department of Sociology at Trinity College Dublin in Ireland (Host) and the WHO Regional Office for Europe, Program for Child and Adolescent Health and Development (secondment host). This action links with the 2030 SDG agenda, and European regional and national health strategies.

It will place ER in the position to establish their own research group and obtain a tenured position at an Interdisciplinary Social Science Department, Sociology or Applied Psychology Department at a European university.