• Eveliina Heikkala, Jouko Remes, Markus Paananen, Simo Taimela, Juha Auvinen, and Jaro Karppinen.
• Medical Research Center Oulu, Oulu University Hospital and University of Oulu, Aapistie 1, 90220 Oulu, Finland. mia.heikkala@oulu.fi.
• Bmc Public Health. 2014 Jan 1;14:542.

BackgroundAdolescent'psychosocial problems associate with unhealthy behaviors, but data on co-occurring patterns is sparse. We investigated 1) whether adolescents could be categorized into meaningful subgroups with respect to psychosocial and lifestyle factors, 2) whether the prevalence of physical inactivity, overweight and smoking vary within the subgroups and 3) whether these unhealthy behaviors persist in a two-year follow-up.MethodsThe study was based on a subgroup of the 1986 Northern Finland Birth Cohort, which consisted of adolescents who replied to a postal questionnaire at 16 years (n = 6792) and a subgroup of this sample at 18 years (n = 1552). Latent class analysis (LCA) was performed to establish clusters at 16 years.ResultsSmoking co-existed with emotional and behavioral problems in both genders. Boys with the most inactive lifestyle slept poorly, whereas multiple problems co-occurred among girls. Those with a high body mass index (BMI) separated as groups of their own. Different combinations of adverse lifestyle and emotional and behavioral problems were relatively common in both sexes as only 51% of boys and 67% of girls belonged to the reference cluster with low probability for these findings. Physical inactivity, high BMI and smoking tended to persist over the two-year follow-up.ConclusionsIt seems that lifestyle and psychosocial factors divide adolescents into distinct subgroups in which unhealthy lifestyle patterns remain between the ages of 16 and 18. This may indicate problems in other life areas and expose them to an increased risk of future health problems.

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