Promoting Healthy Lifestyle Behaviors

The pediatric population faces a public health crisis involving children and adolescents with overweight or obesity. Childhood obesity has become the most disconcerting and predominant pediatric nutritional disorder worldwide. From 2017 to 2018, 19.3% of the children and adolescents in the United States (US) were diagnosed with obesity. Childhood obesity has been linked to psychological conditions such as depression and anxiety. Children that are overweight or obese are more commonly diagnosed with depression than children with a healthy weight. In 2019, 13.6% of children five to seventeen years old received mental health treatment in twelve months, and 8.4% of that population had taken psychotropic medication for their mental health condition. Healthy lifestyle behaviors impact short and long-term health and quality of life among children with depression. Physical activity (PA), healthy nutritional habits, and maintaining a healthy weight can improve children's quality of life with depression and overweight or obesity. Parents have the most significant influence on their children's health. Thus, family-based intervention studies have been conducted to promote children's healthy lifestyle behaviors. Behavioral interventions that combine nutritional, physical, and behavioral components and parental involvement have proven to be the best and most effective practice for treating and preventing childhood obesity among adolescents 12-17 years old. Although there is evidence to support that adolescents benefit from peer and family support and group education, there are few in-depth studies documenting lifestyle modifications that can improve this population's overall physical and mental health. Given this lack of implementation into practice, this project aims to improve healthy lifestyle knowledge and behaviors among adolescents with a mental health condition(s) through preventative and detailed nutritional, physical activity, screen time, and sleep education. This study's purpose is to identify factors that may aid in answering the clinical question: Among adolescents 12-17 years old who are diagnosed with a mental health condition(s), does a family-based educational intervention improve healthy lifestyle knowledge and behaviors, including nutrition, PA, screen time, and sleep? The specific aims are to: Aim 1: To educate adolescents with mental health conditions and their family members about ways to improve healthy lifestyle behaviors. Aim 2: To evaluate an increase in knowledge on healthy lifestyle behaviors after a 45-minute online education session. Aim 3: To evaluate an increase in healthy lifestyle behaviors after the intervention.