Implications for research, policy, and practice
SECONDARY
Despite the limitations of the present study, our findings, emerging from rigorous data analysis, have some implications for research, policy, and practice. For research, our findings suggest that different categories of youth tend to follow different trajectories of mental health that reflect different levels of mental distress and mental well-being. A deeper understanding of these trajectories and their determinants can be of research interest. Determinants like socioeconomic status and gender that were found to be related to the mental health trajectories, as well as appropriate measures of civic engagement that capture unique forms of engaging in civic activities, such as the Norwegian “dugnad,” can be targeted in research to understand their effects and underlying mechanisms.As for policy, the consistency between the current findings and earlier ones regarding the poorer mental health of youth from low SES families and females, continues to trigger the need for youth policies that can align with UN SDGs’ objectives to address these inequalities. With the devasting effects of poor mental health and our findings that about 17% of upper secondary school students belong to a sub-optimal trajectory, school polices that contain both preventive and promotion strategies remain a priority in addressing the negative and positive aspects of students’ mental health.Finally, our findings also have some implications for practice. School interventions that incorporate different preventive and promotion strategies in their health programs and activities to meet the needs of different clusters of students can be useful to address the influence of socioeconomic status and gender on mental health. While the influence of civic engagement on mental health over time was not that apparent, the indication of a concurrent association between the two factors, in line with earlier studies, may suggest that encouraging civic activities in the school can enhance students’ mental health to some extent.