Publications by authors named "V Kekkonen"
Background: Adolescence is a particularly vulnerable stage of development in terms of the deleterious effects of alcohol. Both lower gray matter (GM) volume and greater GABAergic activity have been associated with chronic alcohol consumption during adolescence. However, the association between these measures has not been investigated.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Bullying victimization is experienced by more than 10% of children and adolescents worldwide and has been associated with numerous negative mental health consequences, such as depression and dissociation.
Aims: We investigated the association between bullying victimization and self-cutting in a Finnish adolescent population and whether depression and dissociation act as mediators in this association.
Methods: We used cross-sectional questionnaire data from Finnish students (age 13-18; = 3345; boys = 1454; girls = 1891).
Article Synopsis
- The study explored the connection between alexithymia and the use of primary health care services among adolescents and young adults aged 13-18.
- The findings revealed that higher levels of alexithymia (measured by the TAS-20 scale) were linked to increased visits to health care, but the significance disappeared when controlling for other factors.
- Specifically, externally oriented thinking (EOT) was found to directly influence the frequency of health care visits, while difficulties in identifying and describing feelings were related to health care use only through their association with depression symptoms.
The purpose of this study was to examine the factor structure of the Adolescent Dissociative Experiences Scale (A-DES) questionnaire with item response theory (IRT) methods, including an assessment of measurement invariance with differential item functioning (DIF) analysis. Three abbreviated versions of the A-DES (with 20, 10, and 5 items) were constructed based on the IRT and DIF statistics. The respondents in this population-based study (N = 4,072) were 12- to 19-year-old Finnish junior and senior high school students.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The aims of this study were to investigate the stability of alexithymia from adolescence to young adulthood, as well as the association between alexithymia, peer relationships, and symptoms of depression and dissociation.
Methods: The participants (n = 755, aged 13-18 years) were assessed with self-rated questionnaires and the 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) at baseline in 2005 and on follow-up in 2011.
Results: The changes in the TAS-20 total score (t = -12.