This article explores the historical development of the Swedish deaf community’s struggle for recognition at the turn of the twentieth century. Drawing on Axel Honneth’s tripartite theory of recognition – emotional, legal, and social – the study examines how deaf individuals in Sweden articulated their identities and challenged prevailing norms within a predominantly hearing society. Using historical sources such as the Swedish Journal for the Deaf-Mutes and publications by deaf and hearing educators, the authors trace the impact of oralist policies on the marginalization of sign language and deaf culture. The article introduces the metaphor of ‘circles of recognition’ to describe how demands for dignity and inclusion unfolded across personal, institutional, and societal spheres. It highlights how emotional recognition fostered community bonds, legal recognition enabled educational and civic participation, and social recognition encompassed broader claims to societal belonging. The period between 1880 and 1922—bookended by the Milan Congress and the founding of Sweden’s national deaf association – is presented as pivotal for the emergence of a collective deaf identity. This study contributes to both deaf and disability history by positioning the Swedish case within transnational debates on minority rights, language justice, and the politics of recognition.

Objectives: This study examined the 1) psychometric properties of an independently translated Swedish version of the gaming disorder test (GDT) among Swedish adolescents based on two psychometric theories, 2) measurement invariance across age (i.e., 15 vs 16–17), gender (i.e., males vs females), and gaming time (i.e., < 2 h vs ≥ 2 h), and 3) factors that predict gaming disorder. The findings will help researchers understand and ascertain the use of the GDT among Swedish adolescents. Methods: A total of 5320 Swedish adolescents were recruited and responded to measures including gaming disorder, gaming duration, sleep duration, physical activity, mental well-being, and self-esteem. Statistical analyses were conducted using confirmatory factor analysis, regression analysis, latent class analysis, classical test theory, and Rasch analysis. Results: Satisfactory and unidimensional psychometric properties for the independently translated Swedish version of the GDT were found. Specifically, the factor structure, internal consistencies, separation reliability and separation index were supported, but not the person separation reliability and index. Also, the GDT was invariant across ages but only partially so across gender and gaming time. The GDT can classify adolescents as having a high or low risk of gaming disorder. Lastly, factors that predicted gaming disorder were poorer mental well-being and longer gaming time among males and low physical activity and longer gaming time among females. Conclusion: Due to its conciseness, researchers may use the independently translated Swedish version of the GDT for screening people for gaming issues even in busy settings like schools. Moreover, attention must be paid to males, those with poorer mental well-being, those who are physically inactive, and those with a longer gaming time to help curb gaming disorder. Future research may focus on examining the test-retest reliability and clinical validity of the GDT among adolescents.

BACKGROUND: This study examined the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental well-being and the mediating roles of impulsivity, sleep problems, spiritual health, and self-esteem in this association.

METHODS: Swedish adolescents (n = 5548; boys = 50.9%) responded to an online survey on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, impulsivity, sleep problems, spiritual health, self-esteem, and mental well-being between September and October 2020.

RESULTS: The multigroup structural equation modeling (SEM) results for the whole group revealed a significant direct effect of COVID-19 pandemic on mental well-being and significant mediating effects of impulsivity, sleep problems, spiritual health, and self-esteem (p < 0.01). The mediators among girls (p values < 0.05) were similar to those among the whole group, but among boys, self-esteem (p = 0.186) was not significant.

CONCLUSIONS: Generally, there are multiple pathways through which COVID-19 pandemic affects the well-being of adolescents. Therefore, there may be a need for psychoeducation and/or counseling on different coping strategies during infectious pandemics with a high risk of mortality to enhance mental well-being.

PURPOSE: To explore the role and meaning of music in adolescents' lives and the adolescents' ways of understanding how music listening can impact hearing-health.

METHODS: Open-ended interviews and Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). The analysis involves both individual and more generalized investigations based on the contributions from seven participants.

FINDINGS: The findings show that music is an integrated and habitual aspect of the adolescents' daily lives, used as a tool for emotion regulation, cognitive enhancement, and creating personal space where one can be free from outside criticisms and distractions. There is a preference for music listening in headphones which creates a more intense and private experience. There are varying levels of awareness of the potential hearing-health risks, but the profound meaning of music for their well-being often overshadows any concerns.

CONCLUSIONS: Despite awareness of potential hearing-health risks, the adolescents prioritize the immediate emotional and cognitive benefits of music. Technological advancements and increased social media interactions contribute to a trend towards more personalized music listening. These insights call for more complex intervention strategies and models for health promotion which account for the positive aspects of music listening, instead of merely focusing on the potential risks of loud music.

This article focuses on young unemployed people in Sweden involved in two activation measures. Using the analytical framework of governmentality, it analyses how the participants perceive and value activation measures as government-driven interventions aimed at bringing young people into the labour market based on a neoliberal discourse of the welfare state. The article highlights that the welfare system tries to not only promote behavioural changes, but also change the way people think. At the centre of the study are the people-changing technologies embedded in the Swedish norms of a strong work ethic. The analysis underlines how these technologies are internalised and even become a part of the participant's own free will.

The Short Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale (SWEMWBS) is effective in assessing positive aspects of mental health. Despite its advantages, little is known about group differences in the interpretation of SWEMWBS items across age groups, especially during the adolescence period. Hence, this study examined the psychometric properties of the SWEMWBS through Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA), Rasch analysis and network analysis of Swedish adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic. A total of 5548 participants from the south of Sweden (i.e., Jönköping County) took part in this cross-sectional study through an online platform between September 2020 and October 2020. The CFA, Rasch (including differential item functioning, DIF) analysis and network analysis were used to examine the psychometric properties and measurement invariance of the SWEMWBS. The SWEMWBS had a unidimensional structure with robust psychometric properties. The CFA demonstrated measurement invariance across gender, school year and country of birth, which was also confirmed by Rasch DIF. Furthermore, considerable associations between the items of the SWEMWBS, general health and COVID-19 impact items were observed in network analysis. The SWEMWBS showed robust psychometric properties capable of assessing positive aspects of mental health and well-being among adolescents.

This volume puts disability and labour at the centre of historical enquiry. It offers fresh perspectives on the history of disability and labour in the twentieth century and highlights the need to address the topic beyond regional boundaries. Bringing together historians and disability scholars from a variety of disciplines and regions, the chapters investigate various historical settings, ranging from work cooperatives to disability associations and informal workplaces, and analyse multiple meanings of labour in different political and economic systems through the lens of disability.

The book’s contributors demonstrate that the nexus between labour and disability in modern, industrialised societies resists easy generalisations, as marginalisation and integration were often two sides of the same coin: While the experience of many disabled people has been marked by exclusion from mainstream production, labour also became a vehicle for integration and emancipation. Addressing one of the research gaps of the disability history field, which has long been dominated by British and North American perspectives, the book sheds light on less-studied examples from Scandinavian countries and Eastern Europe including Czechoslovakia, Poland, the Soviet Union, Bulgaria and Romania.

Cutting across national, cultural and class divides the volume provides a springboard for reflections on common experiences of disability and labour during the twentieth century. It will be of interest to all scholars and students working in the field of disability studies, sociology and labour history.

This chapter takes the Swedish Committee for People with Limited Work Ability, appointed in 1943 by the Swedish government, as a starting point to provide a close reading of widespread political stances on labour and disability during the post-war period. It analyses the committee's understanding of the mechanisms of the free market and the consequences of this for people with disabilities, which is seen in relation to an expanding welfare state. The liberal idea of encouraging self-help had long been an important part of the Swedish system that surrounded people with disabilities. Integrating people into the workforce was thus seen as a cornerstone of Swedish society and this was also expressed by the committee that was appointed to address these issues.

This volume is the first of its kind to take a comprehensive and comparative historical perspective on labour and disability during the twentieth century. The project started in 2020 when the editors received a Research Initiation Grant from the Swedish Riksbankens Jubileumsfond foundation to organise an international symposium. Recognising that historical research on disability varied across regions, with the symposium, we aimed to gather scholars from Eastern and Western Europe as well as North America and to facilitate an academic exchange on this topic. The symposium, which was hosted by Jönköping University and the Swedish Institute for Disability Research, brought together emerging and established scholars from ten countries and explored the nexus between disability and labour from a historical and comparative perspective. We decided early on to publish the conference papers, which eventually gave rise to the present volume.