Are school-going adolescents mentally healthy? Case study from Sabarkantha, Gujarat, India

Abstract

Background:Mental health issues becoming the global public health challenge, especially among the youth (12–24 years of age), although they are often detected later in life. In India, the adolescent population constitutes a quarter of the country's population and burden of disease varies from 9.5 to 102/1000 population. Most of the mental health disorders remain unidentified due to negligence and ignorance of multiple factors. Keeping this in mind and lack of population-based studies with good quality for guiding the mental health policies, this study aims to document the prevalence of emotional and behavioral difficulties among adolescents in Sabarkantha district of Gujarat, India.Methods:This is a school-based cross-sectional study conducted among 11–19 years of school-going adolescents during August–September 2016. About 477 adolescents who gave consent to participate were selected from 20 randomly primary and secondary schools. A prevalidated questionnaire for sociodemographic information including global validated standard questionnaire for mental health scoring known as Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) were administered and self-reported responses were documented. Statistical analysis was conducted through SPSS version 20.Results:Mean age of the study population was 14.2 ± 1.4 years. About 14.6% boys and 12.6% of girls had abnormal total SDQ score, while 15.3% boys and 21.9% of girls had borderline SDQ score. Thus, 70.1% of boys compared to 65.6% girls had normal SDQ score. The difference between mean (higher mean score among girls) of total SDQ score of boys and girls was statically significant at the level of P < 0.05. Major risk factors for self-reported mental health issues were illiterate mother, occupation of parents, which make them away from family during daytime, nuclear family, severe addiction to alcohol in the family, financial problem in the family, and adolescent getting daily physical punishment. One-seventh adolescents are vulnerable for mental health problems found in this study. About one-fifth adolescents have internalizing (emotional) and about one-sixth have externalizing (conduct) manifestations.Conclusion:There is an urgent need to address the emotional and conduct manifestation among school-going adolescents. Rashtriya Kishor Swasthya Karyakram framework needs to address these issues on priority.

Predictors of Adolescent Internalizing and Externalizing Mental Health Symptoms: A School-Based Study in Southern India

“…This finding was comparable with those of Nair, S., who also measured that female participants from Gujarat had higher scores in terms of emotional problems compared with male participants [30]. This finding was also confirmed by Puwar, T. et al [44] and Aboobaker, S. et al in other settings in India [37]; Wang et al [40] in China; and Rimal, H.S. and Pokharel, A. in Nepal [45].…”

Mental Health Issues Among School Children and Adolescents in India: A Systematic Review

“…The study aimed to identify original research about mental health issues among school children and adolescents aged 19 years and under in India from studies published predominantly between January 2013 and August 2023. To obtain relevant articles, our initial literature search yielded 358 articles, 31 of which were included in this systematic review, the characteristics of which are summarized in The systematic review includes 24 cross-sectional studies [19,20,23,24,[26][27][28][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44]46,47], two descriptive cross-section studies [17,18], two comparative cross-section studies [21,29], whereas one randomized control trial [22], one survey study [25], and one intervention study [45] respectively. This review had 30,970 participants, of which 14381 (46.43%) were male.…”

“…This review had 30,970 participants, of which 14381 (46.43%) were male. The overall mean age of the school children and adolescents was 14.58 years, with a standard deviation of 1.35 [22,24,[26][27][28][29][35][36][37][38]43,44]. As per participants' concern, the sample size for cross-section studies ranging from 150 to 6682 participants, 242-369 participants for descriptive cross-section studies [17,18] and 462-1000 participants for comparative crosssection studies [21,29], whereas in randomized control trials [22], survey study [25], and intervention study [45], number of participants were 11, 874, and 300 respectively.…”

“…Out of a total of 31 studies, the maximum number of studies, i.e., seven studies from Karnataka [ 26 , 27 , 33 , 36 , 41 , 44 , 45 ], three studies from Tamil Nadu [ 23 , 25 , 47 ], and Gujrat [ 33 , 35 , 40 ], two studies each from Delhi [ 17 , 46 ], Bihar [ 20 , 38 ], Assam [ 18 , 37 ], Uttarakhand [ 19 , 28 ], Pondicherry [ 29 , 42 ], and West Bengal [ 21 , 43 ], and rest of the studies one each from Uttar Pradesh [ 34 ], Haryana [ 31 ], Kerala [ 39 ], Rajasthan [ 30 ], Kashmir [ 24 ], and Goa [ 22 ]. These results highlight the range of research efforts in the states and territories mentioned, emphasizing their geographical diversity.…”

Can a five-minute meeting improve the wellbeing of students? The Indian school experience

“…Additionally, school-age adolescents exhibit high stress levels in everyday life (Mathew et al, 2015). Recent studies have revealed that the prevalence of mental disorders among school-age adolescents in India is rising (Kharod & Kumar, 2015; Mangal et al, 2020; Nair et al, 2017; Puwar et al, 2018; Singh et al, 2017). Previous studies have identified stressors among adolescents, such as the pressure of academic performance, emotional distress resulting from difficulties in forming, maintaining and ending romantic relationships, negotiating autonomy with parents, safety, and risk of sexual harassment, bullying and teasing, among others (Parikh, Michelson et al, 2019).…”