Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Burger, Kaspar
• Becker, Michael
• Schoon, Ingrid
• Pérez-Edgar, Koraly

Titel

Mental Health and Educational Attainment: How Developmental Stage Matters

Ist Teil von

• Developmental psychology, 2024-01, Vol.60 (1), p.108-123

Ort / Verlag

United States: American Psychological Association

Erscheinungsjahr

2024

Quelle

Applied Social Sciences Index & Abstracts (ASSIA)

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Developmental science suggests that the consequences of mental health problems for life-course outcomes may depend on the timing of their onset. This study investigated the extent to which mental health predicted educational attainment at ages 17, 20, and 25 and whether gender moderated the links between mental health and educational attainment. It used data from Next Steps, a nationally representative panel survey of individuals born in 1989/1990 in England (N = 15,594, 48% female, 33% ethnic minority). The findings suggest that differences in mental health were more consequential for educational attainment during adolescence than in young adulthood. On average, girls attained higher levels of education than boys, but gender did not moderate the role that mental health played for educational attainment. Public Significance StatementThis study suggests that educational attainment is more sensitive to good or bad mental health during adolescence than in young adulthood. This indicates a need to protect and promote mental health, in particular among adolescents, to empower them to achieve their academic potential. Findings also indicate that poor mental health is likely to impair the educational attainment of male and female adolescents in equal measure. Thus, mental health professionals should take warning signs of a mental illness in male and female adolescents equally seriously and should intervene in the same way where necessary.