The Relationships Between Unhealthy Lifestyles And Mental Health

It matters to collcect the information about unhealthy lifestyles or unhealthiness of lifestyles for improving life qualities. Aimed at this goal, a measuring device, the Scale of Unhealthy Life-style (the SULS), was developed, with which, as well as other measures, the systematic correlation between unhealthy lifestyles and mental health, the group-and dimension-related characteristics of unhealthy lifestyles, and the potential demands for psychological interventions were investigated.Using the techniques of exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, Study 1 revealed and/or confirmed the psychometric structure of the SULS, behind which there are such demensions as (1) Disregard of health; (2) Hedonic; (3) (Physical) Inactivity; (4) Substance use; (5) Interpersonal re-jection; and (6) Negative emotionality.Study 2 (1) confirmed that the SULS related systematically to the three criterion measures used, and (2) revealed that unhealthy lifestyles predicted or influenced mental healthiness, with different dimensions relating differently to mental heathiness, that is, Disregard of health, Hedonic, Inactivity and Negative emotionality related more generally to mental healthiness across different groups, whereas Interpersonal rejection loomed large in the highest educated working groups, while Sunstance use showed no significant correlation with mental healthiness.Study 3 revealed (1) that there were group-and dimension-specific patterns of unhealthy life-styles, and (2) that the educational status was the strongest predictor of unhealthy lifestyles, fol-lowing which there were urbanhood, age and gender, with the higher educated vs. the lower edu-cated, urban vs. rural individuals, and males vs. females reoported more unhealthy lifestyles.Study 4 revealed (1) that there was some kind of inconsistency between the severity of un-healthy lifestyles and that of lifestyle-related concerns, with the groups of less unhealthy lifestyles (people in or/and from rural areas) concerning more; (2) that different groups have degree-and di-mension-related different potential demands in psychological interventions.The above research shed light on the extensive diffences in unhealthy lifestyles cross different groups, not only at the overall level but also at the dimensional one, with negative emotionali-ty-related healthy risks more general and prominant. It concluded (1) that it is necessary both to chang unhealthy lifestyles and to raise health ones for preventing mental problems and improving the mental life qualities, (2) that there are two important domains of psychologist efforts, in which, aimed at the differences across groups, menal health-related education and mental care in schools should be strengthened, and mental disorder prevention and mental care in workplaces should be initiated, and (3) that menal health-related issues in the rural population should be putten into the discussion schedules, and, especially, the working agendum of psychologists.