Mental Health Status of School-Going Adolescents

The purpose of the present study was to examine the emotional stability, overall adjustment, security-insecurity and self-concept on mental health status of school-going adolescent boys and girls. The sample comprised 150 school-going adolescent boys and girls of 9th and 10th grade, drawn from different schools of Kashmir valley. The participants ranged in age from 12 to 19 years. To assess the mental health status of sampled participants, the Mental Health Battery developed by Singh and Sen Gupta (1987) was administered. This battery includes six sub-tests, namely, emotional stability, overall adjustment, autonomy, security-insecurity, self-concept and intelligence. In the present study, however, only four sub-tests viz. emotional stability, overall adjustment, security-insecurity and self-concept were relevant to the hypotheses and therefore, used in data analysis. In compliance with the objectives of the present study the two groups of boys and girls were compared with respect to their emotional stability, overall adjustment, security-insecurity and self-concept. t-test revealed that the two groups did not differ significantly on their emotional stability and self-concept dimensions of mental health. However, the two groups demonstrated significant differences with respect to their overall adjustment and security-insecurity dimensions of mental health.