Psychological Well-being of Native and Migrant (repatriated) Teachers of Kashmir Valley

Prevalence of armed insurgency in the valley in early 90's led to large scale forced migration of the families of Pandit community from the valley. Over the year's variety of measures, in terms of financial assistance, relief and other initiatives have been taken by the government to provide succour and support to the affected families. Moreover, recently Government announced inter-alia, a package for return and rehabilitation of Kashmiri Migrants who wish to return valley. According to the package, jobs in the State Government services are being provided to the educated migrant youth who are willing to come back to their home land. Taking in to consideration all important aspects of hardships faced by the Kashmiri migrants, the present studies was an attempt to asses and compare the psychological wellbeing of Native and Migrant (repatriated) teachers of the valley. The sample consists 60 teachers (30 native, 30 migrant).General Health Questionnaire -28 (Goldberg&Hillier 1979) was used to measure the psychological wellbeing of both the groups. This scale had five dimensions that is, somatic symptoms, anxiety/insomnia, social dysfunction and severe depression .Students t- test was used to compare the two groups in terms of their mean score for psychological wellbeing as a whole and dimension wise. Result showed that the Native and Migrant (Repatriated) groups of teachers did not differ significantly in terms of psychological wellbeing as a whole and also on its dimensions. But the trend shows that Migrant (Repatriated) teachers have better psychological wellbeing as compared to the Native teachers.