Time attitudes and mental well-being, psychological, and somatic symptomatology in final year high school students

Research has shown that time perspective changes across the lifespan and recent studies have reported significant and meaningful associations between time perspective scores and scores on a range of mental, and physical health outcomes. In the present study, we examined the relationship between Time Attitudes (the affective dimension of time perspective) and mental well-being, as well as psychological and somatic symptoms in late adolescents, in a range of adjusted and unadjusted analyses. Participants were final year High school students (N = 3479 [40.9% Male]) in Northern Ireland. In line with a developing literature, time attitudes were operationalized through person-centred analyses: Cluster analysis yielded profiles, or time attitude categories, based on a six-factor index of attitudes toward the past, the present, and the future. Results supported those previously reported for younger adolescents, showing that higher mental-wellbeing, and both lower psychological and somatic symptomatology, were associated with membership of a Positive time attitudes profile. Further, these well-being constructs were positively associated with being male and reporting higher emotional self-efficacy. These results reported herein are in keeping with explanatory role of time attitudes in health and well-being outcomes among younger, and now older adolescents. We suggest that the next step in the investigation of time attitudes is to examine the extent (if at all) to which intervening with adolescents can nudge them towards a more positive appraisal of past, present, and future.