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 In the middle-aged study participants, mood and happiness tended to
range in association with childhood social position – but not for
grown-ups who had been in the Scouts-Guides program when they were
young, researchers found.
“Scout or Guide membership appears to almost completely remove the
inequality in mental health (aged 50) associated with early life
economic disadvantage,” said lead author Chris Dibben of the
University of Edinburgh in Scotland.
“Given the difficulty governments around the world have in tackling
health inequalities, we think any evidence of substantial impact is
significant,” Dibben told Reuters Health by email.
The Scout Association provides active, outdoor, social activities
for young people, male and female, age six to 25 in the U.K.
Girlguiding is a similar program, and the largest girls only youth
program in the U.K.
For the new study, the researchers focused on more than 9,000 people
born in 1958, 28 percent of whom had been in the Scouts or Guides
program. Mental Health Index tests at age 50 assessed nerves,
calmness, downheartedness and happiness over the previous four
weeks, with answers scored on a scale of one to 100.
On average, participants scored about 75. Adults who had been in
Scouts-Guides scored about 2.2 points higher than other adults. For
those who had not taken part in the programs, mental health scores
ranged along the lines of childhood social position, but there was
no similar range for adults who had been in Scouts-Guides, as
reported in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.
“Detecting an apparent effect 40 or so years after an activity is
always going to be notable, however in many ways existing research
on social mobility, resilience and activities that may be protective
of mental health, provide many explanations of why the kind of
programs used by the scouts and guides and other similar youth
organizations might be protective of mental health,” Dibben told
Reuters Health by email.
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“We know that many of the things being a Scout or Guide enable you
to do or learn are useful for protecting mental health: taking
exercise, eating well, enjoying the outdoors, having good social
skills, having fun and making a contribution,” he said. “We also
know that being a Scout or Guide helps people to encounter new or
challenging situations and cope well, with the help of others.”
“Character skills” like conscientiousness, perseverance and
curiosity may be as important as intelligence for overall life
achievement, he said.
“This then supports the idea that parents might look to activities
that might develop these skills in children,” Dibben said.
The researchers did not account for how caring or supportive
people’s childhood homes were, which may have had an impact, said
Dr. Oliver Huxhold of the German Center of Gerontology in Berlin,
who was not part of the study.
“Caring or supporting parents would have been more likely to put
kids into these Scout or Guide programs,” Huxhold told Reuters
Health by phone.
But there are no real downsides to these types of programs, which
exist in many countries, he said.
“That’s the main reason why I don’t think it’s problematic to
recommend something like this,” he said.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2fDQcLx Journal of Epidemiology and Community
Health, online November 10, 2016.
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