PUBH6008 Applied Research Project In Public Health - Literature Review Assignment Solution

• Introduction

Stress is considered as one of the vital obstacle in the way of health and wellbeing of adolescents and it affects learning outcomes of teenagers significantly. It has been reported that around 10% cost of global health comes from stress related mental health issues, of which adolescents mental health cost makes up substantial value. It is furthered that around 10% of adolescents all over the world are exposed to stress related issues which causes emotional problems among them and keep them at verge of suffering from mental health illness latter in their lives (Leonard et al., 2015). The issue has also obtained prevalence in Australia, where ratio of adolescents who are suffering from stress is increasing (Modecki, Zimmer‐Gembeck & Guerra, 2017). In contrast to adults, the youngsters are comparatively ineffective in dealing with stress and thus there is need of research to suggest most appropriate stress management strategy for adolescents (Ramasubramanian, 2017). Based on this notion, the underlying report has carried out in-depth review of literature regarding use of meditation as intervention strategy for management of stress among Australian adolescents. 

• Search Strategy

The strategy for integrated review has made reliance on search of major data based in ProQuest, where check boxes of peer reviewed and scholarly journal articles were chosen. The key words used for searching the most relevant information were; ‘young’, ‘adolescents’, ‘teenagers’ which were combined with ‘stress’ ‘anxiety’ and ‘depression’. Likewise, the ‘meditation and mindfulness’ were used as key words to reach the most desired information. These key words has enabled me to reach the most relevant research papers and information. I have found numerous publications on the subject, and skimmed through abstracts of research papers, to approach the most relevant research material. 

• Literature Review

The stress among adolescents is widely studied in the literature and it has been reported in study of American Psychological Association that all around the globe, adolescents experience same level of stress as of adults, yet they make reliance on less effective strategies for coping with that stress (Galante et al., 2018). During the stage of adolescence, young people undergo numerous changes and their brain development might be heavily affected by the stress conditions experienced by them. Given the importance of neurological changes at this stage, it is susceptible that young people can be negatively affected by stress as their brain regions are not fully developed and they have high sensitivity to stress hormones (Ginsburg et al., 2019). These factors might lead to dysfunctional emotional development among adolescents. Likewise, it has been suggested in the study of Gutierrez, Conley & Young (2016) that exposure to stress during adolescents can cause anxiety and depression disorders among young people, which could deteriorate their mental health in long run. Therefore, based on these evidences, it can be considered that healthy stress coping practices are imperative for adolescents, which might help them to cope with stress and anxiety.