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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’

#91

Post by caminante »

bencollier49 wrote: post #55
caminante wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you look at the study? I'm biased to pile on too social science studies but the study in question made efforts to address these considerations. From another article [0]: "On average, scouts and guides were 15 per cent less likely to have developed mental illness or depression by middle age, even those from poorer backgrounds whose initial risk was higher." [0] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2016/11/10/scouts-…

Wealth correlates with parental involvement but not at 1.0 - in other words, if parental involvement is a confounding variable (most likely given its established effect on mental health), correcting for wealth won't eliminate it.

Who's disagreeing with you? I'm lost as to what you're responding to.

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

#92

Post by pablobaz »

totally wrote: post #62
redcalx wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a selection bias issue here. E.g. if there were some underling genetic disorder that causes anxiety, then that person is less likely to join a group.

Yep, the bias is that all of the scouts came from households that decided to enroll their kid/s in the scouts. This is not a joke, and there is a difference in value systems and other factors that cut across cliché dimensions like socio-economic status.

As a former scout leader, I think there is also another effect at play. In my experience parents often send children to scouts when they don't fit into more mainstream team sports and when children are struggling to make friends elsewhere.

These children are often particularly socially awkward. I'm not an expert but I think that this group of children may be more predisposed to mental illness.

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

#93

Post by [deleted] »

jjp wrote: post #27
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).

More details on the study from NewScientist [1] They analysed data from a long-running study of almost 10,000 people across the UK who were born in November 1958. They found that 28 per cent of the study’s participants had been involved in the Scouts or Guides, and that these were 15 per cent less likely to suffer from anxiety or mood disorders at the age of 50 than their peers who didn’t join. Scouts or Guides were…

[deleted]

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

#94

Post by bediger4000 »

I'm going to say that the study probably did uncover the truth. I was in the USA Boy Scouts, and one thing I noticed (and disagree with) is the unspoken limitations placed on participants. 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. In Scouts, I learned not to expect to rise to the top, indeed, not to even have ambitions to do so, as this is just not possible. This is probably good for all but a vanishingly small number of people: virtually everyone will not be in command, but will be at most a middle manager. It's probably good for your mental health to not be disappointed when your ambitions to become President, or General or CEO are revealed to be impossible. If you learn "your place" instinctively, you won't spend effort trying to be someone that the system just won't let you be. Good all around, I say.

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

#95

Post by bencollier49 »

caminante wrote: post #91
bencollier49 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wealth correlates with parental involvement but not at 1.0 - in other words, if parental involvement is a confounding variable (most likely given its established effect on mental health), correcting for wealth won't eliminate it.

Who's disagreeing with you? I'm lost as to what you're responding to.

"the study in question made efforts to address these considerations"

I'd argue that they didn't make enough efforts.

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

#96

Post by gonzo »

moyta wrote: post #44
throwaway1892 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing that I got from my time as a scout is to live and work with people I can't stand, which is something that has helped me a lot since that time.

Definitely, even if you hate them you have to work with the rest of your patrol and make your situation as good as possible, whether that be by stringing up tarps, building tripods to hang your stuff on, making an axe yard, or caring for Mike who is having yet another asthma attack/seizure/hypothermia/etc. I was lucky enough to be in a large, non-religous troop that happened to have a bus & be very well organized (4…

As a former SM, the goals (Aims) of Scouting do not include getting young men to the rank of Eagle.

The aims of Scouting are: Character development Citizenship training Physical fitness

The methods used to achieve these aims:

http://www.nesa.org/methods.html

Learning to live with others is one of the things achieved via the patrol method. This tends to develop citizenship.

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

#98

Post by gwern »

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).

Definitely. This is exactly the sort of study you strongly expect the causal conclusion to not obtain and disappear in a randomized study/genetically-sensitive design (anxiety and other mental issues are highly heritable, of course), right up there with such classic sociology non-results as 'children whose fathers leave do worse' or 'children who experience corporal punishment have more behavioral problems' or 'children whose mothers drank during pregnancy are stupider', both because the actual randomized studies of things like early-childhood interventions like Headstart show no effects or fadeout and because there is tons of self-selection in who goes into scouting and who is able to/chooses to stay in it. (Most of the kids who joined with me dropped out at some point, and the more troubled ones dropped out earliest.) Like most of these results, I expect most of the correlation would disappear if you compared siblings, or better yet (but harder to find), discordant twins, or used polygenic scores of genetic risk for anxiety disorders. This study couldn't do it because they took a one-week sample of UK births so no siblings and too few twins, but I'm sure a twin registry or the UK Biobank or someone has asked about extracurriculars like scouting.

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

#99

Post by chris_wot »

joakes wrote: post #72
throwaway1892 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing that I got from my time as a scout is to live and work with people I can't stand, which is something that has helped me a lot since that time.

Not to take away from scouts, but I feel like this study could apply to any group that a child decides to stick with and learn from. Sports teach resilience and the like, as well does joining a music group. My club soccer team during high school was unbeaten for most seasons and ended up state champions, but most of us didn't hangout afterwards or even like each other.

Yeah, except if you are being bullied and nobody steps in to stop it.

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

#100

Post by chris_wot »

ekianjo wrote: post #32
mfukar wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you fail to pay the bills, you aren't going to die. I don't know where you live, but in certain places failing to pay your bills means you end up in the cold rain with nothing to eat.

> I don't know where you live, but in certain places failing to pay your bills means you end up in the cold rain with nothing to eat. That's still not the same as dying. There are homeless people who still manage to get by for years on, despite having no means whatsoever.

Isn't that a point he makes in the article? If you get too cold, you die of hypothermia.
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