Question: Identity and self-esteem have many facets and both have a significant impact on our mental health at all developmental stages, but particularly during the adolescent years. Discuss the aspects of self-esteem and identity in adolescents.
Answer:
Studies found that self-esteem is particularly high during childhood for both boys and girls, but dropped considerably during adolescence. When compare between adolescent girls and boys, girls have slightly more negative self-esteem than boys. Some explains this discrepancy quoting girls’ negative body images during pubertal change, and that their greater interests in social relationships yet with negative social rewards.
In terms of identity, according to Erikson’s fifth developmental stage – identity vs identity confusion characterized individual’s experience during adolescence. During this stage, adolescents are faced with a psychosocial crisis during which individuals explore alternatives in identity development. Psychosocial moratorium is a special feature of adolescence’s journey in search of identity as coined by Erikson. It affords adolescents the freedom to try out different identities and relatively free of responsibilities. One important aspect of identity is that it reorganizes throughout life, which means identity establishes, and it changes as we grow up.
During this trial and error in identity searching, youth who successfully cope with conflicting identities will discard undesirable roles and emerge with a new sense of self – a healthy identity. They are more adaptive and flexible with high self-esteem. This affords the individuals a high degree of openness to changes in their environments, both social and personal. As such they can effectively cope with numerous reorganizations of identity through life, thus provides more stability in their mental health.
On the contrary, youth who fails to establish a healthy identity will suffer from identity confusion, which develops into either extremes a) individual withdraw, isolating from family and peers, or b) immerse in the world of peers, succumb to peer pressure and lose their identity in the crowd. These individuals are more prone to instability in mental health. Because of their confusion, they are more prone to risky behaviors to overcompensate their need to establish a sense of identity.
Therefore, I believe it is important that sufficient counseling both from family and school is very important to provide proper guidance for young adolescents as they go through this vulnerable period in their development. It is also a very delicate issue as to how we provide those guidance as parents and teachers. On one hand we need to make sure that our message are clearly conveyed to young adolescents, on the other hand we need to be careful of our tone to make sure we do not antagonize them and lose their trust.
Further Thoughts:
Have you noticed differences in self-esteem between Hong Kong adolescents and other country adolescents?
Answer:
I think HK Adolescents are generally reserved compared with other countries like the US. One of the contributing factors I think is due to the lack of peer interaction in HK. This is probably due to adolescents that do not have the the opportunity to socialize with his/her peers (for whatever reasons), their identity is damaged, as Erikson's terms "Identity Confusion", and hence low self-esteem,
Another possible reason is whether they could describe themselves as a role that they play in, whether they are playing the role of student, athlete, son, daughter...etc. If they play the role well, then they will have positive self-esteem. Otherwise if they cannot achieve the desirable characteristics of each role, their self-esteem will be somewhat damaged. As Santrock points out "whether they describe themselves when they are with their mother, father, close friend, romantic partner, or peer. They also can differ whether they describe themselves in the role of student, athlete, or employee (Santrock, 172).
From what I observe in the HK, for instance, the student role that HK adolescents play, they have very high pressure at school. They have pressure from teacher, parents to do well in their academics, to get really good grades. Hence if they do not fulfil it, according to the above findings, I guess they will develop low self-esteem. But in the case of other countries, perhaps the intensity of expectations of obtaining higher grades is not that high as compared to HK, hence non-HK adolescents self-esteem will be generally higher.
Further Thoughts:
Who determines if the adolescent plays the role well? Is self-esteem an internal or external locus of control?
Answer:
Locus of Control refers to one's perception about the underlying causes of events in one’s life. For example, internal locus of control means that you believe that events result from your own actions and behaviors; external locus of control means that you believe events result from some external forces bigger than you, such as god, fate or some powerful forces of the universe.
The relationship between self-esteem and other variables have been extensively researched, among them internal locus of control. A quote from Chubb, Fertman and Ross (1997), high self-esteem has been correlated with academic success in high school (O'Malley & Bachman, 1979), internal locus of control, higher family income, and positive sense of self-attractiveness (Griffore, Kallen, Popovich, & Powell, 1990).
Please see the article below:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2248/is_n125_v32/ai_19417322/
These findings make sense to me because self-esteem is a product of evaluations of self-concepts on a wide range of domains of one’s life. If we have an internal locus of control, it means that we take credit for the events that happen to us in our life, we are encouraged to expand our effort in the direction the produce favorable results, this positive reinforcement helps to build self-esteem as we grow up.
In terms of who determines if adolescents play the roles well, it is a tricky question. As Piaget (372, Santrock) mentioned, adolescents is characterized with egocentrism in this stage. On one hand, they strive to develop a sense of uniqueness and invincibility. On the other hand, their decision-making ability is far from perfect, so are grown-ups. It is a critical learning period for the adolescents to learn what roles and how well they play in that particular role, such as being a student or a responsible teenager. With the two opposing forces – adolescents’ desire to make decision on their own and the limitation in ability and experience to make optimal decisions, it is important that parents, teachers and guardians to provide some frameworks for the adolescents to learn on their own whether they play the role well or not. Forcing judgments or boundaries on teenagers seem not to be an effective strategy to me. What do you think?
Further Thoughts: The article from the link above was interesting as female mean scores slightly increased with grade level while male mean scores slightly decreased with grade level. What do you attribute that to?
Answer 3:
Adolescence is a time of opportunity and growth. They explore their identities and roles. Through this process of experimentation, learning and development, young people “lay down the foundations for physical, psychological and social maturity” (Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), 2002a).
During this stage, adolescence attempts to some sorts of high-risk behaviors such drinking, driving, pre-marital sexual activities and substance abuses. All may result in serious and irreversible consequences for themselves and other people. Teenagers in Hong Kong also exhibit no difference from developed countries. The recent report shows that there are substance abuse issues in 95% of secondary schools in HK. Thus, HK government launched a variety of activities in order to educate adolescence away from drugs.
Adolescence is a period of transition. The difficulties with relationships or academic achievement can result in emotional and behavioral issues (Adlaf et al., 2002). However, a close relationship between parent and adolescent can alter the situation. Parents with good parenting skills can be a strong source of support for adolescents to play the role well. The evidence is well documented. (E.g. Parker, J. & Benson, M. (2004). Parent-adolescent relations and adolescent functioning: Self-esteem, substance abuse, and delinquency.)
In 1954, Julian B. Rotter developed the concept of Locus of control. It refers to the extent to which individuals believe that they can control events that affect them. A person with internal locus of control believes that he is competent in particular field or in general. He never plays the victim’s role. In order to achieve this goal, he works hard to develop capability and knowledge. If possible, he also takes note of favorable information which creates positive outcomes in the future. Thus, self-esteem is internal locus of control.
In my opinion, adolescents in developing and developed countries are affected by the behaviors of the adults in the neighborhood. They are all exposed to excess alcohol consumption and unsafe sexual behaviors. Adolescents in 3rd world countries (refer to very rural communities) are “luckier” not to have chance to contact drugs owing to financial constraint. I search over the internet about the study in Vietnam for reference.
Kaljee, L. M. et al (2005). Alcohol use and HIV risk behaviors among rural adolescents in Khanh Hoa Province Viet Nam. Health Education Research 2005 20(1): 71-80.
http://her.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/20/1/71
Answer 4:
For one thing, I think puberty plays a role, as girls are on average two years earlier than boys to go through puberty. Girls have a longer period to settle in her body image during adolescence, while boys lack behind may experience lower self-esteem and also more external locus of control because physical change is out of their control.
Answer 5:
It is rather scary some of the issues that youth are facing in developing countries. The consequences and implications of some of these issues are very serious. It seems the lack of good communication and education is vital in helping them as they deal with issues related to smoking, STD's, unwanted pregnancies, poverty, HIV and the list goes on.
http://www.dcp2.org/file/10/DCPP-AdolescentHealth.pdf
Further Thoughts:
One thing I noticed about the article's risky behaviors that are not typical for most is war violence. How do you think living in the middle of a war zone impact the adolescent socially, physically and psychologically?
Adolescents in developed countries are also no longer relative healthy group. You can also see these risk behaviors prevailing in Hong Kong and other metropolitan.
It is well known that alcohol increases sexually engaging behaviors, particularly in adolescent populations.
Questions for Therapists:
As a therapist, how would you counsel the teen who has identified himself or herself as HIV positive and is engaging in unprotected sex with partners who are not aware of his or her HIV status? This is also an ethical issue, please respond in both the HK and US ethical and legal requirements for psychologists.
Answer 6:
It is a really an ethical issue. In some countries, if you contract HIV and still have sex with others, you will be charged with murder. There is no such case in HK so far.
Back to the room. I think the client is on the verge of collapse if he hear about the news. I have to deal with his emotion, such as anger, depression and hopeless. Especially, suicidal idea and physical assault to sex partners.
Once settled, I have to address the future relationship with his partner.
1) How to do look it another way. Some days are odd but tomorrow is another day.
2) Make a choice. If you still in love with your partner, will you put her in danger?
3) Finally, how to take care of yourself.
There are some thoughts. However, it is still up to him to disclose the illness to his partner.
Question for all:
What if your HIV adolescent client is not in a committed relationship and just having casual sex? Committed or not, Is it just up to your client to tell the unknowing partners of his/her HIV status?
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