The importance of self-esteem and sense of coherence during adolescence in relation to health

The present master’s thesis consists of investigations on the relation between self-esteem and sense of coherence, and the outcome of self-rated health and subjective health complaints in adolescents. Adolescence is a life phase filled with rapid changes and challenges, but also positive development and great potential for health. Self-esteem and sense of coherence are both shown to vary during adolescence and impact individuals’ health. Research indicate that sense of coherence can be viewed as a moderator for subjective health complaints and self-rated health in adolescents, and that the level of self-esteem impacts the strength of sense of coherence. Further, the strength of self-esteem and sense of coherence is seen to vary during adolescence and differ between sexes. The results showed relation between low self-esteem and higher symptom levels of subjective health complaints, weak sense of coherence and higher symptom levels of subjective health complaints, and strong sense of coherence and positive evaluation of self-rated health. Adolescent girls reported higher symptom levels of subjective health complaints, lower self-esteem and weaker sense of coherence than adolescent boys, but girls interestingly had a more positive evaluation of self-rated health. The results also showed that the older adolescents had a more negative evaluation of self-rated health. When separating subjective health complaints into emotional and physical complaints, the results showed that self-esteem and sense of coherence only had significant relations to emotional subjective health complaints. No conclusions can be drawn on causality from this cross-sectional study, but it can be viewed as a basis for future research