The Adolescents Quality of Life in the Gaza Strip: Nutritional and Psychological Risk Factors

Currently, more in-depth interest had been paid globally to the issues relating to nutrition, growth, development and psychosocial well-being of children and adolescents. Hence, this research aimed to identify and assess the nutritional and psychological risk factors affecting the life quality of adolescents in the Gaza Strip in order to highlight and prioritize them for future interventions. There are four objectives in this study, the first is to determine and assess the risk factors associated with two different components of life quality of adolescents in the Gaza Strip, the second is to measure the extent of psychological disorders amongst adolescents affected by current lifestyle in Gaza, the third is to study in depth the effect of nutritional status in the Gaza Strip on adolescent’s life quality, whilst, the fourth is to identify research gaps to set priorities for future relevant studies, that might encourage adolescent’s behavioural changes. In order to achieve these objectives, the study population had been focused on adolescents (1219 years old) who enrolled in the schools of the Gaza Strip during the academic year (2015-2016). The present Cross-sectional study utilized quantitative and qualitative measures by incorporating face to face interview questionnaire with adolescents and focus group discussion with parents and stakeholders. In addition, anthropometric measurements and micronutrients tests were conducted. Triangulation of data was used to ensure the credibility of the results. The study findings revealed that (56.3%) of adolescents were eating healthy foods, where boys showed a little higher percentage (57.1%) than girls (55.5%). Precisely done anthropometric measurements proved that (7.9%) of adolescents were moderate to severely stunted. Based on body mass index, (22.8%) of the study participants were underweight, (12.7 %) were overweight while (3.2%) were obese. Haemoglobin measurement revealed that (15.6%) of the study adolescents were anaemic. In gender terms, anemia affected (17.3%) of girls and (14.1%) of boys respectively. Meanwhile, iron deficiency was (23.3%) among the study participants being higher in girls (27.3%) than boys (19.9%). Vitamin D deficiency was (8%), whilst insufficiency of this vitamin was (35.3%). Zinc deficiency was the highest (36.7%) among the tested micronutrients, and the deficiency slightly higher in Girls (38.1%) than in boys (35.4%). It’s worth mention that, more than half of adolescents (57.7%) were living a sedentary life, being (85.5%) in girls compared to (34.1%) in boys. While (29.9%) of adolescents were active and very active, the percentage among boys was apparently higher than in girls being (49.8%) and (6.4%) respectively. The overall findings of psychological health and well-being dimensions demonstrate that (47.1%) of adolescents perceived depressed mood, where (46%) of them were anxious, and (45.5%) reflected poor psychology. Results of adolescent’s quality of life illustrated that the total score of “money matter” domain of QOL among study population had the highest score (90.2%). On contrary, the lowest scores appeared in; “psychological well-being” and “moods and emotions” domains as (66.3%) and (67.1%) respectively, thus denoting congruent logical relevancy to the (44.2%) of adolescents who perceived their quality of life as poor. The relationship between quality of life and food intake category was not statistically significant. Whereas, the relationship between adolescent’s quality of life and their psychological status was high statistically significant (< 0.001). Based on the study results, nutritional and psychological interventions were carried out to help adolescents who participated in the study and recommended as needy cases for intervention. As per the study results, unprecedented reference data are now available in the Gaza Strip. They can be used for the purposes of addressing the adolescent’s needs and help solving their nutritional and psychological problems, a matter that would undoubtedly improve their quality of life. *Corresponding author: Adnan A.Z Al Wahaidi Senior Pediatrician Child Health Expert Gaza-The Gaza Strip-Palestine Tel: 00972 592 111515, 00972 598 781781 E-mail: wahaidid@palnet.com alwahaidi@gmail.com Citation: Wahaidi AA, Abed Y, Sarsour A, Turban M. The Adolescent’s Quality of Life in the Gaza Strip: Nutritional and Psychological Risk Factors. Food Nutr OA. 2018 Feb; 1(2):105 Copyright: © 2018 Wahaidi AA, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 international License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.