An Exploratory Study To Assess The Psychosocial Wellbeing Of School Going Adolescents At Selected Schools Of Vadodara

Abstract

Background of the study: Poor mental health remains the leading cause of disability, with considerable negative impacts in low and middle income countries. According to WHO mental health conditions account for 16% of the burden of disease and injury in people aged 10-19 years. The 2018 world drug report stated that half of all mental health conditions start by 14 years of age, but most cases are undetected and untreated. Most often signs of poor mental health are overlooked for several reasons such as lack of knowledge or awareness about mental health among health workers or stigma which even prevents adolescents from seeking help.

Material & Methods: An exploratory study was conducted among 242 school going adolescents to assess the psychosocial wellbeing. The samples were selected by stratified cluster sampling method. Data collection was done through structured questionnaire for demographic data and a standardized Self-administered pediatric symptom checklist (PSC-Y) developed by Michael Jellinek and J. Michael Murphy to explore the psychosocial wellbeing of the adolescents. Data collection was done online and the collected data was analysed by using descriptive and inferential statistics.

 Results: The results revealed that 76.44% (185) of the participants were aged between 14-16 years’ females and 53.7% (130) participants were males. Majority of the samples 44.56% (110) were studying in Grade 10. Most of the participant’s parents had secondary education 42.98% (104). 61.16% (148) samples were living with both parents. Among all participants 53.30% (129) samples were belonged to Nuclear family. Only 28.1% (68) samples had stated that often they had family disputes. It was found that among all demographic variables nothing found having association with psychosocial wellbeing of the adolescents except school going adolescents living with both or single parent. The obtained chi square value 4.57 is found greater than the table value at 0.05 level of significance. Other variables found having no association. Hence the hypothesis is rejected.

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Conclusion: Psychosocial problems are common among school going adolescents and it has to be ruled out in beginning stages in order to manage and prevent the consequences in children. Schools may have the full time child psychologist/Consultant in the school to predict the problems and to provide counselling sessions.