Search results

Objective: The aim of this paper is to develop an understanding of how child-perceived parental support and knowledge among children in Sweden differ across ten forms of residential arrangement. Background: Shared physical custody has become an increasingly common arrangement for children in separated families in many European countries. In an international comparison, Sweden has a high rate of parental union dissolution but also the highest prevalence of shared physical custody arrangements following divorce or separation. Over a third of all children with divorced or separated parents spend an equal amount of time living in both parental households. Method: We used data from the Swedish HBSC survey from 2013/14, which are focused on children in grades 5, 7 and 9 in the Swedish comprehensive school system (n=7360) and used perceived parental support and perceived parental knowledge scales as dependent variables in multiple ordered logistic regressions conducted separately by the sex of the parent. Results: The results show that children in shared physical custody report higher levels of parental support and knowledge than children in sole physical custody and equally high as those who live in a two-parent family. Children living in non-symmetrical physical custody arrangements report lower levels of paternal support and knowledge than children whose parents share physical custody equally. Maternal support and knowledge does not differ between children living in symmetrical and non-symmetrical shared physical custody arrangements, whereas paternal support and knowledge is lower in families where the child lives in an unequal residential sharing arrangement with the mother as the main co-residential parent. Conclusion: Post-divorce living arrangements are clearly associated with the relationship between parents and children, with children in shared physical custody reporting stronger relationships than children in sole physical custody. The cross-sectional nature of the data prevents us from drawing conclusions on causality, however.

Aims: The aim of this study was to analyse the link between psychosocial factors in the neighbourhood and work environments, and psychosomatic health problems. Methods: The data were collected in the survey 'Life and Health', which was conducted in 2000 in six Swedish county councils. A total of 71,580 questionnaires were distributed to randomly selected individuals aged 18-79. A total of 46,636 respondents completed the questionnaire. This gives a response rate of around 65%. For the purpose of this study only gainfully employed individuals aged 18-64 are included, which gives a total of 22,164 individuals: 11,247 (50.7%) women and 10,917 (49.3%) men. Two scales were used to measure the psychosocial environments in the neighbourhood and at work. The link between these scales and psychosomatic health problems was analysed by using multinomial logistic regression. Results: The results show that both 'Psychosocial Neighbourhood Environment' (PNE) and 'Psychosocial Working Environment' (PWE), independently, are related to psychosomatic health problems. Hence, the health effects of social relations in the neighbourhood were not modified by the quality of social relations at work, or vice versa. The levels of psychosomatic health problems are highest for people experiencing a low degree of social solidarity in the neighbourhood and for those experiencing low degrees of supportive work relationships. Conclusion: The strong, but independent, effects of social factors related to the neighbourhood and to the workplace on psychosomatic health problems point to the importance of simultaneously considering social relations in different arenas in order to increase the knowledge of the connection between social relations and health.

AbstractThe purpose was to investigate the association between disability, and psychosomatic problems among adolescents at compulsory regular school also taking into account parental and student achievement expectations and student self‐efficacy. We analysed cross‐sectional questionnaire data collected in 2010, from 2004 Swedish adolescents. The results showed that the degree of psychosomatic problems and self‐efficacy varied with regard to whether the adolescent reported having a disability or not. The distribution of parents' and adolescents' own achievement expectations did not differ significantly with regard to having a disability. Neither achievement expectations nor self‐efficacy did moderate the association between disability and psychosomatic problems.

The purpose of this explorative study is to bring together a variety of Swedish data sources with indicators of youth mental health and living conditions in order to illuminate trends during the last decades, elucidate possible determinants of mental ill health and develop hypotheses to explain the observed trend patterns. The analyses in the study reveal some surprising inconsistencies with respect to the mental health trends among young people during the 1990s. Most striking is the pattern of increasing youth unemployment coinciding with almost inverse trends in the rates of suicide. The secular trends in fatal suicides during this period do not show any increase but some actual decrease in sub‐populations despite high sustained levels of unemployment. In contrast, survey data indicate that the general mental health of youth during this period appears to have deteriorated.