The ‘healthy self’ and ‘risky’ young Other: young people's interpretations of health and health-related risks

Abstract

Concern about health-related risks dominates modern day public health discourses on young people's health. Based on ‘official’ notions of health, the public health risk-based approach not only downplays the potentially different meanings young people attach to concepts of health, but it also has a tendency to problematise and pathologise young people and their health. Drawing on findings from an ethnographic study with young people aged 15–16 years in England (n = 55); in this article, I examine young people's understandings of health and health-related risks. I used group discussions, individual interviews and observational work in a school and surrounding community settings to collect the data on which this article is based. In this article, I show the importance young people in my study attached to ‘being happy’ and ‘having fun’, but also how dominant constructions of youth as a time of risk were taken up and reproduced by young people themselves to create and sustain differences amongst young people. I examine the implications of these differences for young people's health and the possibilities for empowerment – highlighting some of the emergent contradictions between young people's constructions of the ‘healthy self’ and ‘risky’ young Other. Specifically, in this article, I highlight young people's preference for a more positive conceptualisation of their health, one which recognises the importance of their shared social positioning for the promotion of health.

Keywords:

• health
• risk
• empowerment
• young people
• health promotion

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Professor Peter Aggleton and Dr Claire Maxwell for supervision and advice during the course of the research. This study was funded by a 1 + 3 Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Studentship.

Notes

1. The Gold group refers to the ‘top’ students as demonstrated by their academic and non-academic achievements and participation in extra-curricular activities; the Silver group refers to those students considered to be less academic and do not readily participate in extra-curricular activities; the Bronze group refers to those students considered disengaged from school and unlikely to achieve academic qualifications or to participate in extra-curricular activities.