Mental Health: An Empirical Study Among Adolescent School Girls

Abstract

Mental health is an inseparable part of health, and developing positive mental health is very much needed, especially for adolescents because young people form precious human resources of every country. The empowerment of children and adolescents is very essential in today’s context in India as there is rapid globalization and urbanization with the transition of joint families and the breakdown of traditional social support systems. The researcher has attempted to study the prospective association between the socio-economic factors and mental health of adolescent school girls studying at St.Mary’s Girls Higher Secondary School, South Gate, Madurai District. A descriptive research design has been adopted. The universe of the present study consists of 297 adolescent girl students studying at St.Mary’s Girls Higher Secondary School, South Gate, Madurai District and randomly 60 samples was collected. A semi-structured questionnaire was used to collect the socio-demographic data and a standardized tool on Mental Health developed by Paul G. Ritvo et. al (1997) was used. The major findings of the study showed that more than half (54 %) of the respondents had a low level of anxiety, little more than half (52%) had a high level of depression and more than half of the respondents (56%) had low of behavior control and more than half of the respondents(54.6%) have low level of mental health. Promoting mental health in schools must be given utmost importance because mental health problem can affect anyone at any point of time. So it is essential to understand mental health in a right way and help our students to an extent that they will be able to cope with it easily and effectively.