Impact of Nature of Stay, Gender and Birth Order on Mental Health of Post Graduate Students

Mental Health is observed to be related to many personal, social and cultural factors. Among these several factors the type of stay, gender and birth order also seem to have greater impact on mental health. At the same time present students at higher education do experience many mental health problems due to high stress caused by rigorous competition. In view of this the present study is taken up to investigate the impact of nature of stay, gender and birth order of Post Graduate (PG) students on their mental health. Mental Health Inventory developed by Jagdish and Srivastava (1996) was administered on a 200 PG students of which 100 were staying at hostels and remaining at their own house. The findings of the study revealed that the students staying at home have significantly higher mental health in terms of several dimensions as well as over all scores. Male PG students are also observed to have significantly higher mental health in almost all dimensions and over all scores compared to PG girls. Further with regard to the influence of birth order on mental health multiple comparison test is also applied.