Background: This article describes changes in health complaints of Austrian adolescents during a period of 12 years.
Methods: The HBSC (Health Behaviour in School-aged Children) symptom checklist assesses how often specific physical and emotional symptoms occurred in the past 6 months. We display data collected in 1994, 1998, 2002 and 2006 for the whole sample (about 4500 students at each time point) as well as separated by age, gender and family affluence.
Results: The symptom load in Austrian adolescents decreased in the past 12 years slowly, but continuously. Boys and younger adolescents scored more favourably at all time points. Only in 2006, not at an earlier measurement time point, an impact of family affluence on symptom load could be detected.
Conclusions: With the exception of the socioeconomic impact on symptom load in the year 2006, from an Austrian perspective, these results are favourable. The HBSC-data to be collected in 2010 will show if this trend continues to increase.