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Research papers, The University of Auckland Library

What does it mean to “be in a mood” at school? This question guides this thesis, which analyses the relationship between young people’s experiences of moods and the discourses and pedagogies of moods they encounter at school. The emotions and moods of young people in Christchurch, New Zealand, have, in recent years, come under considerable scrutiny. A national decline in rates of youth mental health and concern over the lasting psychological effects of the 2010-2011 Christchurch Earthquakes have justified increased attention to and funding for youth mental health promotion and school-based mental health education programs. Drawing on a year-long school ethnography at a public girl’s high school in Christchurch with 22 Year 10 students (age 14-15), this thesis examines how young people interact with state and psychiatric discourses of youth and mental health. It explores how young people integrate and transform these discourses in their experiences and knowledges of moods as they relate to mental health, education, friendships, and the (in)stability of the self in time. Additionally, this thesis proposes an anthropological reconsideration of moods. Developing insights from phenomenological and medical anthropology and bringing them into conversation with ethnographic analysis, the approach to moods in this thesis sees two necessarily interconnected ways in which moods become significant for understanding subjectivity and contemporary society. On the one hand, moods are an integral dimension of phenomenological experience in which it is possible to dwell in affective ambiguities, producing open-ended horizons of experience. On the other hand, young people’s experience of moods is refracted through moods’ medicalised formulation as experience that can be bounded, taxonomized, transformed into kinds of knowledge about the self, and thus acted on in distinct and morally situated ways. Attending to the experience of “being in a mood” at school reveals how medical and psychiatric knowledges are woven into moral experience in the everyday. This moral experience of moods has critical implications for how young people in New Zealand today situate the self in relationships, in the world, and in time, and therefore is particularly revealing for developing anthropological understandings of teenage subjectivity

Research papers, University of Canterbury Library

Background: There has been a psychopathology focus in disaster research examining adolescent mental health and wellbeing, but recently studies have begun to also examine wellbeing-related constructs. Although an increased risk of posttraumatic stress disorder has been established in disaster-exposed adolescents, comparatively little is known about how disasters impact adolescent wellbeing, nor how factors within the post-disaster environment interact to influence holistic adolescent mental health and wellbeing. Objective: The objective of this study was to describe the holistic mental health and wellbeing of adolescents living in an earthquake-struck city by considering a range of mental health and wellbeing indicators, as well as risk and protective factors hypothesised to influence mental health and wellbeing. The dual-factor model of mental health was used as a framework to guide this study. Method: A survey of Christchurch secondary school students was used to gather data about their subjective wellbeing, risk of low wellbeing, psychological distress, quality of life, exposure to Adverse Childhood Experiences, social support from friends and family, school connectedness, and expectations about future quality of life. Results: A slim majority of students reported good subjective wellbeing (52.3%) and high current quality of life (56.4%), whereas a larger majority reported low risk of psychological distress (79%). An equal proportion of students reported high and low risk of low wellbeing. There were no statistically significant differences in any of the variables measured between adolescents who did and did not live through the Christchurch earthquakes. Regression analyses identified that school connectedness, social support from friends and family, and future expectations of quality of life significantly predicted subjective wellbeing, risk of low wellbeing, risk of psychological distress, and current quality of life. The number of Adverse Childhood Experiences significantly predicted only risk of psychological distress when the effects of other variables were controlled for. Conclusion: The findings of this study indicate that there is a low mean level of wellbeing and quality of life in this sample of adolescents living in a severely earthquake- affected community. School connectedness, social support from family and friends, and expectations about future quality of life were shown to significantly predict variance in subjective wellbeing, quality of life, and psychological distress. This suggests that there are social and environmental factors that can be targeted to improve holistic mental health and wellbeing in disaster-affected adolescents who have experienced high levels of trauma. Conclusions in this study are limited by the representativeness of the sample, the cross- sectional nature of the study, and potential sampling bias.

Research papers, University of Canterbury Library

Background: There has been a psychopathology focus in disaster research examining adolescent mental health and wellbeing, but recently studies have begun to also examine wellbeing-related constructs. Although an increased risk of posttraumatic stress disorder has been established in disaster-exposed adolescents, comparatively little is known about how disasters impact adolescent wellbeing, nor how factors within the post-disaster environment interact to influence holistic adolescent mental health and wellbeing. Objective: The objective of this study was to describe the holistic mental health and wellbeing of adolescents living in an earthquake-struck city by considering a range of mental health and wellbeing indicators, as well as risk and protective factors hypothesised to influence mental health and wellbeing. The dual-factor model of mental health was used as a framework to guide this study. Method: A survey of Christchurch secondary school students was used to gather data about their subjective wellbeing, risk of low wellbeing, psychological distress, quality of life, exposure to Adverse Childhood Experiences, social support from friends and family, school connectedness, and expectations about future quality of life. Results: A slim majority of students reported good subjective wellbeing (52.3%) and high current quality of life (56.4%), whereas a larger majority reported low risk of psychological distress (79%). An equal proportion of students reported high and low risk of low wellbeing. There were no statistically significant differences in any of the variables measured between adolescents who did and did not live through the Christchurch earthquakes. Regression analyses identified that school connectedness, social support from friends and family, and future expectations of quality of life significantly predicted subjective wellbeing, risk of low wellbeing, risk of psychological distress, and current quality of life. The number of Adverse Childhood Experiences significantly predicted only risk of psychological distress when the effects of other variables were controlled for. Conclusion: The findings of this study indicate that there is a low mean level of wellbeing and quality of life in this sample of adolescents living in a severely earthquake-affected community. School connectedness, social support from family and friends, and expectations about future quality of life were shown to significantly predict variance in subjective wellbeing, quality of life, and psychological distress. This suggests that there are social and environmental factors that can be targeted to improve holistic mental health and wellbeing in disaster-affected adolescents who have experienced high levels of trauma. Conclusions in this study are limited by the representativeness of the sample, the cross-sectional nature of the study, and potential sampling bias.

Research papers, University of Canterbury Library

Background: There has been a psychopathology focus in disaster research examining adolescent mental health and wellbeing, but recently studies have begun to also examine wellbeing-related constructs. Although an increased risk of posttraumatic stress disorder has been established in disaster-exposed adolescents, comparatively little is known about how disasters impact adolescent wellbeing, nor how factors within the post-disaster environment interact to influence holistic adolescent mental health and wellbeing. Objective: The objective of this study was to describe the holistic mental health and wellbeing of adolescents living in an earthquake-struck city by considering a range of mental health and wellbeing indicators, as well as risk and protective factors hypothesised to influence mental health and wellbeing. The dual-factor model of mental health was used as a framework to guide this study. Method: A survey of Christchurch secondary school students was used to gather data about their subjective wellbeing, risk of low wellbeing, psychological distress, quality of life, exposure to Adverse Childhood Experiences, social support from friends and family, school connectedness, and expectations about future quality of life. Results: A slim majority of students reported good subjective wellbeing (52.3%) and high current quality of life (56.4%), whereas a larger majority reported low risk of psychological distress (79%). An equal proportion of students reported high and low risk of low wellbeing. There were no statistically significant differences in any of the variables measured between adolescents who did and did not live through the Christchurch earthquakes. Regression analyses identified that school connectedness, social support from friends and family, and future expectations of quality of life significantly predicted subjective wellbeing, risk of low wellbeing, risk of psychological distress, and current quality of life. The number of Adverse Childhood Experiences significantly predicted only risk of psychological distress when the effects of other variables were controlled for. Conclusion: The findings of this study indicate that there is a low mean level of wellbeing and quality of life in this sample of adolescents living in a severely earthquake- affected community. School connectedness, social support from family and friends, and expectations about future quality of life were shown to significantly predict variance in subjective wellbeing, quality of life, and psychological distress. This suggests that there are social and environmental factors that can be targeted to improve holistic mental health and wellbeing in disaster-affected adolescents who have experienced high levels of trauma. Conclusions in this study are limited by the representativeness of the sample, the cross- sectional nature of the study, and potential sampling bias.