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Scouts and guides provide ‘mental health boost for life’

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Scouts and guides provide ‘mental health boost for life’

#151

Post by bediger4000 »

pitaj wrote: post #143
wtallis wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "For instance, what's the highest assignment one can have as a Boy Scout? Junior Assistant Scoutmaster. The Scoutmaster is always very firmly in control." It sounds like you were in a Boy Scout troop being run with a Cub Scout mindset, rather than one operating according to the official rules and goals. I've never seen JASM described as the highest job assignment a scout can hold; most people would say that's the S…

Yeah. SPL is the highest position a boy can have. JASM is just a position for older scouts to transition to a more adult mentor role as they're approaching adulthood.

Senior Patrol Leader, Junior Assistance Scout master, what's the difference, really? If a use a military, rather than a business metaphor, a boy can be a non-commissioned officer at best, not even a lieutenant.

Re: Scouts and guides provide ‘mental health boost for life’

#152

Post by redcap »

madaxe_again wrote: post #80
mkrum wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only from a socioeconomic point of view, but I would guess that having parents who are involved enough in a child's life to pay for, drive to, and participate in these types of activities is more likely to be a source of a "mental health boost"

This is what I was going to say - suspect this stems from having parents or guardians who cared enough to get you involved in such an activity, and the environment that suggests, rather than scouting directly.

There's a lot to be said for going for a 3-day hike in the wilderness, even if you're accompanied by a parent.

Going with a scout group usually means that you wont be relying on the parent as you want to stay as a member of the group of people your own age.

You'll start to feel tired and sore at some stage, and it may start to rain. But if you've prepared properly (and the scout motto is "be prepared"), then you should be ok.

It's just a matter of getting away from it all, and perhaps embracing the suck as mentioned above.

Re: Scouts and guides provide ‘mental health boost for life’

#153

Post by wtallis »

bediger4000 wrote: post #151
pitaj wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. SPL is the highest position a boy can have. JASM is just a position for older scouts to transition to a more adult mentor role as they're approaching adulthood.

Senior Patrol Leader, Junior Assistance Scout master, what's the difference, really? If a use a military, rather than a business metaphor, a boy can be a non-commissioned officer at best, not even a lieutenant.

The point that you are refusing to understand is that what you describe and apparently experienced is at most a common failure mode. It is not what the program is intended to be, and it is not representative of a typical troop with properly trained adult leadership. I'm sorry you had an asshole scoutmaster who couldn't internalize even the first half hour of the training he was supposed to receive before serving in that role.

Re: Scouts and guides provide ‘mental health boost for life’

#154

Post by cmrdporcupine »

redcalx wrote: post #145
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely a huge selection bias. My daughter did Sparks & Brownies and it ended up being a big clique of kids who all went to the same church & school and in the end she (a hyper sensitive, artistic, intellectual type child and a more solitary, introverted type) hated it and asked to quit it. I went through the same thing with Scouts when I was a boy. The kids that remain after the first couple years of cute crafts…

Yeh. The paper claims to have controlled for this by comparing against kids in other groups, I suspect that might not be a very good control. E.g. if your daughter went on to join a different type of group that she did fit in with better, then that's a very clear selection bias. If I'm understanding correctly their control assumes kids just randomly select a group then stick with it.

what about kids who don't do _any_ group

Re: Scouts and guides provide ‘mental health boost for life’

#155

Post by mattkrause »

dominotw wrote: post #47

Defund all 'social research'. This article is should be proof enough of all the money and opportunity lost, not to mention harmful influence on policies, on make work research.

All of it?

You really don't think that it's important to understand the factors that affect people's quality of life, or how groups interact? You don't see any practical applications for this? No possible way that understanding group dynamics could pay off, say in an workplace or military situation?

Re: Scouts and guides provide ‘mental health boost for life’

#156

Post by mattkrause »

kelukelugames wrote: post #40

correlation != causation.

Yes. And the researchers know that too. There's an entire section of the paper devoted to teasing this apart. From the third paragraph of the paper ("Methods")

"[T]here are multiple threats to the validity of such an approach. We were particularly concerned about factors affecting a young person's probability of attending Scouts–Guides, which could also be protective of mental health in later life. To test for this possibility, we used three approaches. First, we explored a form of ‘negative control’ exposure. Specifically, we investigated whether attendance at other types of organisations (voluntary groups and the church), and other outside school clubs, which might have a similar set of common factors encouraging attendance and which might be protective of mental health in later life, were also associated with better later life mental health, conditioning on scouts–guides attendance. The absence of an association would suggest that an unmeasured common factor was not confounding the scout–guide association, while the existence of an association would be ambiguous with an unmeasured common factor and a third factor, independent of scout–guide attendance, but acting in a pathway through the other types of organisation on mental health, being possible. Second, we sought evidence of a dose–response relationship, exploring whether fractions of attendance were related to better mental health. Third, we explored whether the Scout–Guide association was weaker in regions with a higher proportional attendance which might suggest Scout–Guides not being the causative agent."

Re: Scouts and guides provide ‘mental health boost for life’

#157

Post by radicsge »

kbart wrote: post #79
radicsge wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure it make sense. How to choose/decide about religion (or the opposite) without knowing about it. It's like refuse to send him to elemental art/math/chemistry class until he choose the university himself. And the another thing, you have enjoyed it (as a whole package), yet you deny this from your child? Sounds a bit strange.

Knowing about it and be a subject to it differs quite a bit.

That's right, there are quite a few thing in the world, that you need to experience (to really understand), because knowing about it is not the same. Like poverty (disability etc), one might know about it, but until experience it one might look those down. You need to be exposed many things as a child to gain experience, because as an adult you will be much more closed to new things and have less time. + this is safe.

Re: Scouts and guides provide ‘mental health boost for life’

#158

Post by mattkrause »

Artoemius wrote: post #3

It might be one of the cases where correlation doesn't imply causation. For an objective study, we would need to assign children to groups randomly. Otherwise, we can miss various obscure selection effects. (For example, if children who are more likely to be scouts, are also likely to be from a particular socioeconomic background).

An RCT for this would literally be insane. "Sign up and we might abduct your kid on Thursdays from 7-9pm, as well as 8-10 weekends/year."

Please though, give the researchers some credit. Controlling for demographic factors is sort of the bare minimum for something like this--which they attempted to do by including two "social position" factors in the model.

They also included some factors relating to childhood (presumably pre-Scouts) mental health, which might also help address selection bias.

Re: Scouts and guides provide ‘mental health boost for life’

#159

Post by cairo_x »

Chronic depression guy here. Was in scouts. Had depressed episodes just as much in as out. I remember one time I was close to suicide, and watching everyone else enjoying themselves made it worse. Would not recommend. I think people with depression wouldn't have gone voluntarily, but I was kind of forced. If you're going through depression scouts is the last fucking place you want to be.

Maybe those who develop it in later years have less chance because you're less likely to join if you're prone to depression in the first place? Mehbeh?

edit: I was never bullied. Had some fun times, but mostly struggling to keep head above the pits of darkness. Good parents. Lucky guy. I always appreciated my position from an abstract point of view.

Best way to describe it: Fatigue is an emotion (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3323922/). You can only work through fatigue for so long. That's what it's like with depression, except sleep doesn't refresh you. Wake up and it's still there. Crippling.

Re: Scouts and guides provide ‘mental health boost for life’

#160

Post by jwdunne »

77pt77 wrote: post #149
altonzheng wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about this, a lot of bullies bully out of their own inner pain.

Not really: http://www.today.com/parents/study-bullies-have-higher-self-... > the study by researchers at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada, also found that bullies had the lowest levels of depression, the highest levels of self-esteem and the highest social status. > The study supports the evolutionary process theory that there is a biological explanation for bullying because bullies gain benefits…

High self-esteem is what I was referring to, in essence.

High self-esteem is not equal to sound mental health. Psychopaths have high self-esteem.

Not every bully is a psychopath. Unwarranted self-esteem leads to problems in life whether it's high or low.

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