Psychosocial health connected to everyday life and to broader societal structures among young girls
The thesis points towards that psychosocial health, including challenges and coping, should be understood, and dealt with, related to the actual everyday contexts where life happens, but also related to the overarching structures and rulings in society.
Janne Lund
PhD Candidate
You may follow the disputation online. Link for registration as an online spectator at the bottom of this page.
Janne Lund of the Faculty of Health and Sport Sciences at the University of Agder has submitted her thesis entitled «Hverdag og verden er unge jenters psyke. En kontekstualisert forståelse av psykososiale helseplager blant unge jenter» and will defend the thesis for the PhD degree Friday 24 June 2022.
She has followed the PhD programme at the Faculty of Health and Sport Sciences.
Summary of the thesis by Janne Lund:
Psychosocial health connected to everyday life and to broader societal structures among young girls
Self-reported mental health problems among adolescents have increased and this is specifically evident for girls.
In this thesis mental health problems are understood as psychosocial in the way that girls’ perception of themselves is related to both their close surroundings and their more distant surroundings. The study is focused on adolescent girls from a general population, mainly girls from the 10th grade.
The aim of this project was to explore how different forms of social structures, in society and in everyday life in relation to other people, are related to young girls’ psychosocial health.
A total of three papers is included in the thesis
Paper 1 is a systematic literature review where the relationship between socioeconomic status and depressive symptoms among girls is explored.
Socioeconomic status in the family could be related to depressive symptoms among adolescent girls since there is higher prevalence of symptoms among girls with low socioeconomic status.
Paper 2 is a qualitative interview study with an institutional ethnographic analysis where we explore how school stress among adolescent girls is related to institutional processes.
School stress among girls seems to occur as the girls address assessment and grades in an instrumental rationality at school.
Paper 3 is a qualitative interview study with a content analysis where coping related to social challenges is explored.
Girls have varying ways of coping, and their coping includes different intentions. Avoidance coping appears as a useful and proactive way of coping in some contexts.
Social structures
Social structures in different contexts seem to be related to psychosocial health concerning the three specific areas that we have investigated among young girls.
Psychosocial health among young girls can be understood as contextualized in the way that different social structures become important both regarding the experience of what is difficult and how to overcome the difficulties.
Furthermore, the agency of girls may imply that social structures hold different meanings for different girls in various contexts of everyday life.
The thesis points towards that psychosocial health, including challenges and coping, should be understood, and dealt with, related to the actual everyday contexts where life happens, but also related to the overarching structures and rulings in society.
In that way the thesis invites to improve the psychosocial health among girls through work at macro levels. Specifically, by reducing social inequality, critically reflect upon whether the content and organization of schooling predicts too narrow and unidirectional norms on how to learn and how to be. And to work towards a broadened, social and contextualized understanding of coping.
Disputation facts:
The trial lecture and the public defence will take place in Auditorium I1 066, Ketil Moes hus, Campus Kristiansand, and online via the Zoom conferencing app - registration link below.
Dean Hilde Inntjore, Teacher Education Unit, University of Agder, will chair the disputation.
The trial lecture Friday 24 June at 10:15 hours
Public defence Friday 24 June at 12:30 hours
Given topic for trial lecture: «Hvilken betydning har ulikhet og makt for ungdommers kjønnede stress og mestring?»
Thesis Title: «Hverdag og verden er unge jenters psyke. En kontekstualisert forståelse av psykososiale helseplager blant unge jenter»
Search for the thesis in AURA - Agder University Research Archive, a digital archive of scientific papers, theses and dissertations from the academic staff and students at the University of Agder.
Avhandlingen er tilgjengelig her:
https://uia.brage.unit.no/uia-xmlui/handle/11250/2998586
The Candidate: Janne Lund (1985, Kristiansand) Child Welfare Educator, MPhil in Childhoodstudies, Norwegian Centre for Child Research at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (2010). Work experience as social worker giving special education in primary school, in kindergarten and for Unicef in Georgia (Kaukasus). Present position: Assistant Professor at the Department of Sociology and Social Work at the University of Agder.
Opponents:
First opponent: Associate Professor PhD Lene Larsen, Department of People and Technology, Roskilde University, Denmark
Second opponent: Professor Kristoffer Chelsom Vogt, Head of Department, Department of Sociology, University of Bergen, Norway
Associate Professor Tale Steen-Johnsen, Department of Sociology and Social Work, University of Agder, is appointed as the administrator for the assessment committee.
Supervisors in the doctoral work were Associate Professor Siri Håvås Haugland, UiA (main supervisor), Professor Anders Johan Wickstrøm Andersen, University of Agder and Associate Professor (ret.) Venke Frederike Johannesen, University of Agder (co-supervisors)
What to do as an online audience member:
The disputation is open to the public, but to follow the trial lecture and the public defence digitally, transmitted via the Zoom conferencing app, you have to register as an audience member on this link:
https://uiano.zoom.us/meeting/register/u50kceCvpj0sHdbtSVAdlV7pKgSq3FPRUUwk
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We ask online audience members to join the virtual trial lecture at 10:05 at the earliest and the public defense at 12:20 at the earliest. After these times, you can leave and rejoin the meeting at any time. Further, we ask audience members to turn off their microphone and camera and keep them turned off throughout the event. You do this at the bottom left of the image when in Zoom. We recommend you use ‘Speaker view’. You select that at the top right corner of the video window when in Zoom.
Opponent ex auditorio:
The chair invites members of the public to pose questions ex auditorio in the introduction to the public defense. Deadline is during the break between the two opponents. The person asking questions should have read the thesis. For online audience the Contact Persons e-mail are available in the chat function during the Public Defense, and questions ex auditorio can be submitted to Eli Margareth Andås on e-mail eli.andas@uia.no.