Abstract
In the last three decades, there has been increasing public and policy interest about a series of issues relating to the adjustment and social wellbeing of adolescents and young adults. These issues span a range of topic relating to: • Mental Health and Personal Adjustment • Crime and Delinquency • School Achievement and Employment • Substance use and abuse • Suicidal Behaviours Recurrent references to these issues may be found in both the New Zealand and the international literature; and see the DMHDS website http://www.otago.ac.nz/dmhdru/publications. Parallel to these concerns there has been a large investment in research into the study of the prevalence, risk factors and causes of these outcomes. For example, in New Zealand, large investments have been made into two major longitudinal studies (the Christchurch Health and Development Study (CHDS); the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study (DMHDS)) that have studied birth cohorts of over 1,000 subjects from birth into adulthood. One of the key findings to emerge from such research has been the discovery of often strong associations between different adolescent problems. For example, it has been found: that young people who leave school early are at increased risks of crime and mental health problems; that crime and substance use frequently cooccur; that young people dying from suicide or making suicide attempts frequently have a history of mental health problems and antisocial behaviours; and that young people who develop depression also frequently suffer from anxiety). These, and similar associations, raise interesting and important questions about the social, 2 familial and developmental processes that lead to the co-occurrences and correlations between different aspects of adolescent development and adjustment. Put in the most general terms, these findings invite two questions. 1. What aspects of adolescent adjustment are correlated or associated and to what extent? 2. What factors or processes explain these tendencies for different aspects of development and adjustment to co-occur? This report has been commissioned by a consortium of New Zealand Government agencies (Treasury; Social Development; Education) to provide answers to the first of these questions using data from New Zealand’s major longitudinal studies (the CHDS and the DMHDS). The aim of the report will be to build up a general profile of the extent to which various aspects of adolescent adjustment are correlated or associated and to use data from two independently conducted research projects to provide cross validation of these findings.