Indian Journal of Health and Wellbeing

Pages: 524-525
Aparna Singh, B.D. Bhatia, S. K. Upadhyay and Vineeta Gupta (Department of Pediatrics, Institute of Medical Sciences, B.H.U., Varanasi)

Thalassemia has become a worldwide clinical problem due to increasing immigration of ethnic groups with high prevalence of thalassemia. 30 million people carry thalassemia gene in the world of which approximately 15 million alone are in India. The carrier rate varies from 3 - 17 % in different ethnic groups. Over the past three decades, better medical facilities, regular blood transfusions and iron chelation have improved the quality of life of children with thalassemia and converted it from fatal to chronic disease with prolonged life. Thalassemia is an inherited autosomal recessive blood disease which is characterized by an imbalance in the production of alpha and beta polypeptide chains of haemoglobin. The goal of medical care is not only to achieve long term survival but also to achieve the best possible psychological, social and spiritual wellbeing. With increased life expectancy of these patients, complications keep arising such as transfusion related infections, allosensitization, iron- overload related cardiac, endocrine and liver disturbances, toxicities of iron chelators, hepatic involvement, neurological complications and psychological manifestations. These can manifest as anxiety, nervousness, irritability, demanding a lot of attention, depression, etc. in the child. This paper emphasizes the fact that these children may require something more than simple medical management and also psychological support. In short, beta thalassemia has a spectrum of varied manifestations and complications. We need to develop preventive strategies like pre- marital screening, genetic counselling, ante- natal diagnosis and educational programs for awareness. Apart from early diagnosis, there is also a need to increase medical facilities which is a great challenge facing India .This paper gives a brief overview of the disease and focuses on the behaviour of children with thalassemia. We have described their psychological symptoms and strongly recommend psychological interventions as part of effective management plan.

Pages: 529-532
Amjad Ali and Abu Sufiyan Zilli (Department of Psychology, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh)

Since, private and government sectors differs to each other in terms of their cultural values, other related opportunities and problems, therefore, the present investigation is planned to make a comparative study of mental health among students of private and government schools. It was hypothesized that students of private schools would have better mental health as compared to the students of government schools. The sample of the present investigation consists of (N = 160) respondents, 80 students from each private and government senior secondary schools were randomly selected from different parts of Aligarh, U.P. A highly standardized mental health inventory consisting of 56 items developed by Jagdish and Srivatava (1983) was administered individually to each respondent of the sample. This inventory assesses 6 dimensions of mental health such as self- evolution, perception of reality , integration of personality, autonomy and stability, growth oriented attitude and environmental mastery. In this inventory high score is indicative of good mental health and low score is indicative of poor mental health. Finally, t- test was employed to analyze the data of the present research. Statistical analysis reveals significant difference between means of two groups of private and government schools. The findings of this research may have its own significance and far- reaching implications in this context.

Pages: 538-540
Sujaritha Magdalin and Jelin Rebekah A. (Department of Psychology, Presidency College, Chennai, Tamil Nadu)

The present study investigated the influence of maternal stress on the self esteem of their teenaged children. The study comprised of 60 respondents (30 mothers and 30 of their children aged between 13 and 15) chosen by purposive sampling method. Parental stress scale (PSS) by Berry and Jones (1995) and the self esteem scale by S.Karunanidhi (1996), were used for this study. Pearson's Correlation was used for the analysis of the data collected. Results showed that there was a significant negative relationship between parenting stress and the self esteem of their teenaged children. Results also showed that there was no significant relationship between parenting stress competency, and global self esteem levels of the teenaged children indicating that the competency self esteem and global self esteem remain unaffected by the influence of parenting stress. This finding implies that the ability of the teenagers to perform their scholastic tasks remain uninfluenced by the parenting stress of their mothers.

Pages: 546-548
B. Prasad Babu (Indira Gandhi National Open University)

The present study was conducted to assess the level of stress among women teachers working in normal and special schools. The study was conducted on a sample of 100 women teachers. Among them 30 teachers were from government schools, 35 teachers were government aided schools and 35 teachers remaining were drawn from private schools. They were administered a questionnaire on stress by Latha. The results indicated that there was a significant difference in the level of stress among women teachers handling normal and special children and also significant differences were observed in their age, experience and for teachers who are working under different management schools.

Pages: 556-559
Ameen Abdulla and Baby Shari (Department of Psychology, University of Calicut, Kerala)

Crime has been taking place since time immemorial. The most common definition about “Criminal Behaviour” is that it portrays any behaviour that goes against or violates law, whether the offender is caught or not. Likewise a criminal is an individual who commits an act that violates the strict rules and regulations of the society, thereby harming or not harming another individual, property and so on intentionally or unintentionally. The various causes that lead to a crime to take place are neurological deformities, genetic trait, situational factors, and uncomfortable bad experiences undergone in childhood such as sexual abuse, physical abuse, and emotional abuse and so on. These are nothing but various forms of child abuse that violate a child's right to live a happy life. All the victims may not experience in the same way. It is usually seen that majority of these individuals take along these experiences to their adulthood in a complex manner. Sexual abuse is studied in depth in the present study. This paper attempts to find out whether these nightmare experiences make the victim become an offender himself. On conducting regular semi structured interviews with prisoners housed in various prisons of Kerala, mainly focusing on rape offenders, paedophiles and child abusers the investigators were able to see that most of the offenders had gone through sexual abuse in their childhood, being un-intervened and that had changed their lives drastically. Most of the offenders kept coming back for the same type of offense, time and again. Some psychological factors like rejection sensitivity and attachment patterns are identified as intervening variables. The details are discussed in the paper.

Pages: 563-566
Simerjeet Kaur (Dashmesh Nager, Civil Lines Rampur, UP)

Just as healthy body enhance our capacity to fight the disease causing elements in our body and increases our stamina .similarly healthy mind increases our capacity to withstand adverse situations of life. Enhancing mental health is the greatest challenge for the persons with mental retardation and their parents. Only parents can help, support and make home improvement in the mentally challenged persons. It becomes very necessary that first of all, the problems and requirement of such parents should be found out. This study is focused on the counseling needs of the parents of the mentally challenged persons, so that they may provide better guidance and support to their children to enable them to lead a normal life. For identifying their needs interview and observation method was used. This is exploratory research based on the study of the 20 parents, their problems, their dilemma, and their ways to handle their children.

Pages: 569-571
Vidhya Ravindranadan and Immanuel Thomas (Department of Psychology, University of Kerala, Kerala)

In the present study an attempt has been made to understand the differences in state-trait anxiety, spiritualism, and maladjustment among three different groups of participants showing symptoms of phobia (specific phobia, social phobia, and mixed phobia) and a group of normal controls. Data from a sample of 200 participants were utilized for the purpose. The tools used were Fear Inventory, State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, Materialism-Spiritualism scale, and Mathew Maladjustment Inventory. The major finding of the present study was that the phobic groups scored significantly higher than the control group in state anxiety, spiritualism, and maladjustment. In trait anxiety, the mixed phobia group scored higher compared to all the other sub groups.

Pages: 576-581
Sudhesh N.T. and Baby Shari (Department of Psychology, University of Calicut, Kerala)

Learning disability is the limited ability in learning, restricted to certain areas of learning; they do not include learning problem which are primarily due to visual, hearing or motor handicaps, mental retardation, emotional disturbance or to adverse environmental factors. As learning starts with birth and ends with death, as disability can be expected in any of the minute faculty of human being; while limiting to the academic learning and the types and varieties of learning disabilities explored till now are limited. In the present era, just due to the importance given by the common man to education, the differentially-abled performance creates lot of difficulty to certain parents. The present study investigates such parental stress in relation to their parenting behavior styles. The sample includes parents of learning disabled children (LD) and parents of non-disabled children (NLD), especially limiting to mothers. The collected data will be scientifically discussed in the paper.

Pages: 586-587
S. Robinson (Department of Psychology, Perunthalaivar Kamarajar Govt.College of Education, Karaikal, U.T of Puducherry)
In this study the investigator attempts to estimate the different components of emotional intelligence of school teachers in Karaikal region of U.T of Puducherry. A sample of 43 female teachers who are working in different schools of that region. The background variables such as age, teaching experience and various dimensions of emotional intelligence have been statistically analysed. The study reveals that age, teaching experience and components of emotional intelligence are not statistically significant. Inter-correlation of components of emotional intelligence showed significant relationship with the dimensions of self-awareness, Empathy, self-motivation, emotional stability, managing relations, integrity, self-development, value orientation, commitment and altruistic behaviour. Regarding the relationship among the co-domain commitment is least influenced and emotional stability is more influenced among the school teachers irrespective of their age and years of experience.

Pages: 592-596
Sumith K. Sridharan and Baby Shari (Department of Psychology, University of Calicut, Kerala)

All people have 'behaviours' in order to function in this world aptly. Sometimes it is behaviour that moves us towards our goals and sometimes the behaviour itself may become a problem and interferes with the proper functioning of an individual. The children with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder are quite different from normal children both in behavioural as well as learning aspects. As AD/HD children are very energetic and the symptoms of AD/HD are most often present from the age of three, and sometimes last into adult life, the burden of carrying and handling them are more readily felt by the mothers. Mothers of AD/HD children are challenged and frustrated from time to time by the noncompliance and misbehavior of their children which makes them react negatively to such behaviours of their children. They were found to have more stress, less parenting satisfaction, lower self-confidence, less warmth and involvement with their children, used corporal punishment and higher levels of authoritarian parenting styles. These were seen to be more significant than the mothers of non problematic children. It was found that mothers' behaviour and disciplinary practices itself made the child more prone to express symptoms like non-responsiveness, over-reaction, behaviour problem etc. The paper explores multi-dimensional parenting behaviour and parenting stress of mothers of AD/HD children and tries to see whether there is significant difference in parenting stress amongst the mothers of AD/HD children who adopt non-deviant, fully deviant and partially deviant mothering. Results show that Mothers of AD/HD children adopt positive as well as negative dimensions of parenting behavior, to a great extent and belong to a partially deviant parenting. Mothers of AD/HD children adopt different styles of parenting behavior and it differs significantly in the parenting stress and its sub-factors, which they experience.

Pages: 609-614
P. Don Bosco and V.D. Swaminathan (Department of Psychology, University of Madras, Chennai)

“Mathematics anxiety” was first detected in the late 1950's. Dreger and Aiken (1957) noticed undergraduate students reacting emotionally to arithmetic and mathematics. They introduced for the first time a new term 'Mathematics Anxiety' to describe students' attitudinal difficulties with mathematics. It was recognized as a problem as early as 1970, since then it has become a global problem among students. Mathematics anxiety has become most researched topic among psychologists and educationists for almost 40 years. The long school administrative experience of the researcher and the class 10 Nagaland Board of School Education results (2007-2011) are self explanatory to show that mathematics anxiety among school students are on the rise. A study on “Predictors of Mathematics Anxiety among Naga Adolescent Students in Kohima” Nagaland (2011) was a felt need to find out whether Numerical Ability, Study Skills and General Anxiety be the predictors of mathematics anxiety among Naga adolescent students in Kohima. The study was also intended to find out whether there would be gender difference on Numerical Ability, Study Skills, General Anxiety and Mathematics Anxiety. Random Sampling method was used to choose the institutions and also sections of class 9 and class 10 to avoid bias and disparity. The sample selected for the present study included 584 students (291 girls and 293 boys of classes 9 and 10) from six private unaided co-educational Higher Secondary Schools in Kohima Nagaland. Multiple Regressions, Path Analysis, 2X2 factorial ANOVA was used for the analysis of the data. Numerical ability and Study skills had significant inverse relationship with cognitive dimension of mathematical anxiety. This proved the fact that the greater the numerical ability and study skills the lesser the cognitive component of mathematics anxiety. Both Numerical ability and Study skills contributed inversely to the behavioural aspect of mathematics anxiety. Numerical ability and Study skills showed significant negative correlation with somatic manifestations of anxiety. Numerical ability as well as study skills showed significant inverse relationship with social aspect of mathematics anxiety. All the predictors such as Numerical Ability, Study Skills, and General Anxiety have significantly contributed to mathematics anxiety. Though there was no significant gender difference with regard to Numerical Ability but boys differed significantly from girls on mathematics anxiety. The common belief that boys are superior to girls on numerical ability was not accepted and there was no significant gender difference on numerical ability. Mathematics anxiety is real, and is present in all age levels regardless of their mathematical ability (Betz, 1978). It is a 'learned' emotional response to one or more of the following: participating in a mathematics class, listening to lecture, working through a mathematics problem, and discussing mathematics therefore this learned behaviour could be 'unlearned'. Naga Adolescent students in Kohima found to be having moderate mathematics anxiety, added to that general anxiety and mathematics anxiety were more among girls than boys.

Pages: 620-623
Fatima Bi and Shamim A. Ansari (Department of Psychology, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh)

The objective of the present investigation was to study organizational identification and job-tenure as a function of organizational commitment. Data were collected from a sample of 287 teachers teaching in Aligarh Muslim University. For collecting data on 'organizational commitment' scale developed by Shah and Ansari (2000) were used having three dimensions namely, 'affective', 'continuance' and 'normative' commitment and for 'organizational identification' scale developed by researchers (Bi & Ansari, 2011) was used, having seven facets viz., 'organizational prestige', 'organizational belongingness', 'autonomy in organization', 'employee-centered management', 'promotional opportunities', 'supervisory behaviour' and 'transparency'. Job-tenure was assessed the number of years spent in his/her professional career. Results of regression analysis revealed that 'organizational identification' is significantly and positively predicting three criterion variables viz., 'organizational commitment', 'continuance commitment', and 'normative commitment' while 'organizational belongingness' emerged as significant and positive predictor of 'organizational commitment' and 'normative commitment'. 'Organizational prestige' only predict positively to 'affective commitment' while 'transparency' predict negatively to 'normative commitment'. It is to mention that job-tenure has not been found instrumental in predicting 'organizational commitment' and its various dimensions. The findings are discussed in the light of supporting studies and their conclusions are given.