Diminution in Academic Stress of Adolescents with Academic Resilience and Self-Esteem

Academic stress is like a web, which has gripped the young minds during their tender age. However; Self-esteem and Academic Resilience are good predictors of Academic stress. "Resilience" is the positive capacity of people to cope with stress and adversity. Self-esteem is a developed attitude about one's personality and is an important factor in directing behavior throughout the various aspects of life. The purpose of the paper is to study role of self-esteem and academic resilience in lowering down the academic stress of adolescents. The study has been conducted on a sample of 240 adolescents. Self-esteem inventory (SEI-School form; Stanley Cooper Smith, 1975), Resilience Scale (Wagnild & Young, 1993) and Scale of Academic Stress [SAS-3; - Abha Rani Bhist (1987)] were used to measure Self-esteem, academic resilience and academic stress respectively. Statistical analyses were performed with the SPSS 13.0 package. The findings suggest that Academic stress of the adolescents having high scores on self-esteem (F=34.95**, p<01) and academic resilience ((F=12.16**, p<01) found to be low which shows that high ability to fight back the odds along with high self esteem can make adolescent fight back all the setbacks of their lives in a positive way. The findings are also in consonance with the earlier researches which emphasize that the deleterious effects of stress on mental health are less important for individuals who possess such resources compared to those who do not (Plancherel et al., 1994).