clipped from: www.reuters.com NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - When it comes to defining good health, low-income teenagers may put more stock in mental well-being than wealthier teens do, a new study suggests.
The study, of 1,157 U.S. children ages 12 to 15, was partially aimed at confirming a phenomenon seen in earlier research -- that teenagers' views of their own general health are often out of sync with their parents' views.
But the study also found that families' views differed according to income. Among higher-income families, children's and parents' health ratings depended on physical health factors -- such as how often the child had been sick in the past month, or the number of missed school days in the past year.
For low-income families, physical health mattered, but so did mental health. In general, teenagers who had seen a mental health professional in the past year gave better ratings to their overall health than other low-income teens did.