Modernity, Urbanization and Youth Mental Health Globally

Session 2: Young adults

Abstract

A main actual challenge is to explore holistically the determinants of psychosocial distress in young people experiencing the urban transition. The young people's health is a priority in modern societies where psychosocial distress can be associated with chronic unemployment, criminality and suicide, especially in socially excluded and disadvantaged populations, as working classes and ethnic minorities. However, the main poor aspects of the modern lifestyle, e.g. individualism, consumerism and chronic poverty, are spreading around the world with variable degrees according to the insertion into the industrialization process of each country. From this perspective, the goal of our international collaboration between France, South Africa and Senegal is to provide new insights on the determinants of psychosocial distress in young people from socially disadvantaged urban areas, including jointly material aspects as chronic poverty and relational aspects as individualism and social isolation. Instead of adopting a restrictive conception of poverty, the major innovative approach of this collaboration is to confront together all aspects of a "poor life" including material, affective and social lacks involved in the development of psychosocial distress in young people living in socially excluded urban areas. Our project will be presented during this speaking.

Emmanuel Cohen

Emmanuel Cohen, is a biocultural anthropologist and tenured researcher at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), based in the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, France (7206 "Eco-anthropology" Mixed Research Unit). He works as much on the biological adaptations of the body as its variable sociocultural conceptions among human populations experiencing ongoing lifestyle transitions caused by the phenomenon of urbanization. Based on a holistic approach, He focus on the impact of the urban transition-especially the conjoint demographic, nutritional, and epidemiological transitions-on the health of African and Western populations experiencing this lifestyle transition. With the articulation of biological and sociocultural data, along with the use of mixed-methods approaches, he evaluate the adaptability of these populations to rapid urban expansion, involving physical and sociocultural environmental changes, such as: a higher accessibility of high-calorie foods, a decrease of physical activity, and the development of more individualistic lifestyles. All together, these impact the nutritional, epidemiological, and demographic dynamics, with variable expressions regarding the multiple biocultural trajectories of populations.