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How do home environments contribute to the mental health: Case of Russian adolescents
One of the most crucial problems of contemporary clinical psychology and psychotherapy is searching for ecological resources of well-being and mental health. Based on the environmental psychology researches (Coolen, 2011; Edgerton, 2014; Kyttä, 2004; Nartova-Bochaver et al., 2015; Nordström, 2014) we assumed the friendliness of home environment to be an important predictor of its inhabitants’ well-being. Friendliness of home environment (FHE) we define as extent of how much it satisfies the inhabitants’ needs. FHE combines number of affordances providing by home to its inhabitants and its conformity to their personalities. Our tools were: developed by authors Functionality of Home Environment Questionnaire, The Personal Relevance of Home Environment, Authenticity Scale (Wood et al., 2008), Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale (Tennant et al., 2007). Participants were 124 adolescents (Mage=14.1, 58 males, 66 females), living in Moscow and rural area in various social contexts (regular school, gymnasium, orphanage, village home). In total, 15 variables were investigated. We have found that: 1) Well-being is stronger predicted by the personal relevance of home than by its functionality; 2) Girls are more sensitive to home friendliness than boys; 3) Moscow school students are more sensitive to anti-predictors than to predictors of well-being. Hypothesis is partly confirmed. In discussion, we can refer to gender differences and to specificity of life plans in adolescents from different contexts.