Conscious Choice of a Healthy Lifestyle as a
Manifestation of Safe Personal Behavior in Adulthood
Antonina Kononchuk1, Tetyana Svatenkova2,
Oleksandr Svatenkov3, Danylo Kononchuk4
Mykola Gogol Nizhyn State University, Nizhyn, Ukraine
Background. Healthy living as a way of life is aimed at preserving and improving people's health. It is one of the strategic vectors for the development of Ukrainian society. The formation of a healthy lifestyle occurs in the process of socialization of the individual, through a purposeful and conscious process of creating a person's own life-support system, which is based on a responsible attitude to their health.
Particularly relevant is the problem of healthy lifestyles of the individual in adulthood, as young people form a group that is prone to negative environmental influences due to lack of value orientations and lack of experience. The list of life-threatening and health-promoting factors for young people is impressive and threatening. 40% of boys and 30% of girls use alcohol regularly, 10% of teenagers try drugs, 32.8% of teenagers for every 100,000 people commit suicide. Depression causes 60% of youth suicides. 82% of boys and 72% of girls have smoking experience under the age of 18 (O.O. Seleznyovа, 2019, O.Jaremenko, O.Vakulenko, Yu. Galustyan, 2004).
These factors determine the need for safe behavior among young people, where a healthy lifestyle is an indicator of a responsible attitude to one's life and health.
Purpose. Identify and analyze the characteristics of healthy lifestyles of young people as a manifestation of the formation of their safe behavior.
Methods. We applied theoretical methods: analysis of scientific literature, documents, synthesis, comparison and synthesis of data when studying this problem. We conducted a survey and used interviewing, observation, mathematical statistics methods to identify the characteristics of healthy youth lifestyles and their relationship with safe behavior.
Results. The philosophical works of V. Petlenko, L. Suschenko, G. Tsaregorodtsev and others are covered in the paper on the essence of health problems and various aspects of a healthy lifestyle; in medical researches of M. Amosov, I. Brehman, Y. Lysitsyn, A. Sakhno and others; in social and pedagogical - O. Balakireva, O. Vakulenko, L. Zhalilo, N. Komarova, B. Raina, O. Yaremenko and others. Psychological-pedagogical and social aspects of forming healthy lifestyles of children and youth are characterized in the studies of O. Bezpalko, O. Dubogay, N. Zaveryko, I. Zvereva, N. Zimivets, A. Kapska, G. Laktionova, S. Omelchenko, V. Petrovich, S. Strashko, F. Filatov, E. Fromm and others.
Scientists treat health on the basis of a comprehensive approach as "... the dynamic state of complete physical, spiritual, psychological, intellectual, social well-being, and not just the absence of disease or physical disabilities based on the definition of WHА" health "(I.D. Zvereva, 2012). There are its corresponding components: physical, spiritual, psychological, intellectual, social (V. Ananiev, I. Brehman, O. Vasilyeva, G. Nikiforov, B. Rein, F. Filatov, E. Fromm).
A healthy lifestyle is a system of thought, activity and behavior that is purposeful and serves the well-being of all components of health. In fact, it manifests itself in a way of life that a person consciously chooses and reproduces in everyday life in order to preserve and promote health, to understand its value for one's life and to be responsible for one's actions in the context of harm to one's own health and the health of others. This lifestyle and attitude towards one's self and surroundings characterizes the formation of personal behavior as safe.
The problem of safe behavior of young people is caused by difficult life circumstances, irresponsible attitude to their health, their actions, lack of necessary information or its unreliability, negative phenomena in the youth environment. The research of this problem by scientists T. Alekseenko, R. Vainola, M. Vasilyev, N. Zaveriko, S. Kushnaryov, V. Latchuk, N. Liz, Yu.Naumenko, A. Popkov, L. Sidorchuk, M. Snitko and others has allowed to characterize safe behavior as "behavior that reflects a person's responsible attitude to his life and the consequences of his actions and actions in different life situations and in different environments" (T.F. Alekseenko, 2009). The manifestations of safe behavior are: healthy lifestyles, absence of various addictions, bad habits, avoiding life-threatening and health situations, adherence to social norms. Social institutes are areas of formation and acquisition of experience of safe behavior of the person. Among social institutes, we distinguish higher education institutions. The immediate task for higher education institutions is to foster a responsible attitude of young people to their health, the health of others, the formation of the need for self-knowledge, self-improvement of physical, mental and mental abilities.
Experimental work was carried out with the student youth of Nizhyn, Chernihiv region. The students of the higher educational establishments of the city made a sample, namely: Nizhyn Mykola Gogol State University, Nizhyn Agrotechnical Institute, Nizhyn City School of Culture and Arts named after Maria Zankovetsky and Nizhyn Medical College. There were 688 subjects studied, of which 210 were boys and 478 were girls. We analyzed the respondents' answers to the questionnaire. The questions were aimed at studying the students' opinions regarding understanding of the essence of a healthy lifestyle, factors influencing the process of forming a healthy lifestyle and safe behavior, awareness of the importance of this problem in comparison with other social problems, etc.
The data obtained indicate that, "Do you think your lifestyle contributes to maintaining your health?" we have the following results:
- 398 respondents said that their lifestyle contributes to maintaining health;
- 100 respondents believe that their lifestyle is not conducive to health,
- the rest chose the "hard to answer" option. In our opinion, this answer is closer to the no answer.
Thus, it can be assumed that almost 59% of the students in Nizhyn are implementing a healthy lifestyle.
The results of the respondents' answers to the question: “For you, health is…” showed that the student youth of Nizhyn adhere to the most comprehensive definition in their understanding of health, which is enshrined in the scientific literature on this subject (67.7% of respondents) ). This understanding of the meaning of the concept of "health" by student youth is one of the factors that influence the formation of a healthy lifestyle. Thus, it can be argued that the correct understanding of the content of the concept of "health" by students is one of the factors that determine the success of higher education institutions in shaping a healthy lifestyle. These can also include the value orientations of young people in fashion, the influence of the factors of socialization of meso- (social policy of the state, mass media, etc.) and microlevel (family, peer groups, teachers, etc.), activities of state and non-governmental institutions and organizations. In particular, one of the determining factors in this list is youth fashion. The question was asked to find out its place in the life of student youth: "Do you think that among peers today there is a fashion for: ..".
Respondents were offered seven options to answer this question, namely: “cool” clothing, smoking, drinking, sexual experience, playing sports, drug use, tattooing. Respondents were able to choose several answer options according to the instructions, so the total percentage exceeded 100%. The largest number of respondents - 366 (53.2%) - said that today among young people there is a fashion for "cool" clothes. 327 (47.5%) of those polled said that there is a fashion for smoking among modern youth, and 250 (36.3%) to drink alcohol. In addition, 43 (6.3%) respondents indicated that there was a fashion for drug use in the youth environment.
224 (32.6%) respondents indicated that sport is one of the trends of modern students as opposed to previous answers. It is interesting that the opinion of girls in general coincides with the data presented above, while boys are the most fashionable are sports (97 respondents - 46.2%) and smoking (99 - 47.1%). "Cool" men's clothing is only in third place in the ranking. Thus, we can conclude that youth fashion is a significant factor in shaping student lifestyles.
We asked the question: "To what extent do you personally care about these social problems?" (the list was more than 20 options) to determine the importance of a healthy lifestyle to student youth compared to other social problems. Additional calculations were introduced to process the results. This way of working with the data made it possible to obtain a numerical expression of the respondents' answers for each of these social problems. This determined its place in the overall ranking. Unfortunately, the healthy lifestyle issue ranked only eighth in this rating. The issues that are directly related to a healthy lifestyle are:
alcohol abuse among youth - 11th;
the spread of smoking among young people - 16th place;
insufficient opportunities for sports - 18th place;
low awareness of healthy lifestyles - 19th out of 21 of the social problems mentioned in the questionnaire.
It should also be noted that there are no significant differences in boys 'and girls' responses. Spearman's rank correlation coefficient for them is 0.75.
The family remains a powerful social institution in the fields of education and health. This is a testament to the range of people students talk to about the issues they are most concerned about. All this is objectively related to the full or partial financial dependence of the students on the parental family and subjectively - with the importance and peculiarities of family upbringing, parental authority, traditions of Ukrainian ethnicity.
Peers have a leading role in the issues of safe behavior, gender relations, puberty, and the intimate life of contemporary students. These are the traditional spheres of youth influence on each other. This way of interaction and transfer of experience is related to the assimilation and reproduction of social norms, values, behaviors and relationships inherent in the youth subculture. This is especially evident in the psychological content of the leading activities of this age - communication with peers and mastering adulthood. After all, responsibility for one's choice, one's own actions, one's choice of vector of professional strategy and life perspective, lifestyle are all important components of adulthood.
The state has a real basis for the implementation in the educational sphere of the tasks of preserving and promoting the health of student youth by creating positive motivation for the conscious choice of a healthy life organization style - this has proved the study of the current legal framework in Ukraine shaping the health of the young generation.
Theoretical analysis of problems of formation of student's health in the period of university education, young people show that the level of study of the problem does not provide a sufficiently substantiated explanation of a number of phenomena that arise during the acquisition of educational information on preservation and promotion of health, in particular in the process of valeological education and upbringing. One of them is a kind of cognitive-behavioral dissonance: despite subjective prerequisites (high academic success, uncritical acceptance of healthy lifestyle samples, etc.), students' activities do not meet the principles of health formation, do not provide sufficient level of their activity in choosing healthy style organization of life.
There is much that can be done to build mental endurance early to prevent mental disorders and illness among teens and young people, and to control these ailments and restore health. Prevention begins with the knowledge and understanding of the first signs and symptoms of mental illness. Parents and teachers can help shape the life skills that children and adolescents need to overcome everyday difficulties at home and at school. Psychosocial support can be provided in schools and other community levels. It is also advisable to organize, improve or extend the training of health care professionals to identify and manage mental disorders.
Communication, interaction with friends, family play a decisive role in shaping healthy student life, safe behavior skills. Student youth are aware of the value of health, to a certain extent, the desire to lead a healthy lifestyle, but this is often hampered by a variety of social problems that relay in each individual's individual life situation. Based on the above, we believe that a prerequisite for the formation of motivation for a healthy lifestyle and safe behavior of student youth is the attitude to their health as an important vital value. Therefore, the development and implementation of innovative methods and forms of educational work in higher education institutions in this area, we determine the appropriate strategy for improving the health of young people. It is with this aspect that we connect the prospects of further exploration of the problem of healthy lifestyles and the formation of safe behavior of modern students.
Conclusion. The article examines the features of healthy lifestyle of young people at the stage of higher education institution as a manifestation of their safe behavior. The interconnection of health, healthy lifestyles and the formation of safe personal behavior are revealed.
Keywords. Health, youth, healthy lifestyles, safe behavior.
References
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Contacts information (for lead author):
E-mail antonina_kononchuk@ukr.net
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