| dc.description.abstract | In the past four years school-related pressure among adolescents in the Netherlands has increased according to the Dutch Health Behavioral Science-study of 2017. Little is known about the consequences of this on the mental health outcomes for adolescents of different socio-economic status (SES). This study examined the moderation effect of SES in the relation between school-related pressure and mental health of adolescents in the Netherlands. Furthermore, the mediational role of parental support within this relation was also examined in this research. The data was derived from the Dutch Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) study of 2017. The sample used for this study, out of the bigger database of the HBSC, consisted of 7369 adolescents in high school between the age of twelve and eighteen. Results showed that adolescents of different SES had significant different mental health outcomes by the same amount of school-related pressure, whereas adolescents of low SES where in disadvantage. This was not the case when there was no perceived school-related pressure at all. Therefore, SES was found as a moderator within the relation of school-related pressure and mental health. Furthermore, results showed that parental support mediates the relation between SES and mental health, whereby an increase in parental support led to an increase in mental health. Again, adolescents with low SES were in disadvantage and received less parental support than their higher SES peers and therefore had worse mental health outcomes. Further research is needed to investigate additional factors within this complex mechanism, like gender, educational level and schoolyear, to get broader insight. Only in that case, effective interventions can be established to prevent an increase in the existing mental health gap between low and high SES adolescents. | |
