Educational Aspiration as a Correlate of Mental Health among Rural Adolescents

Pages:135-141
Amanpreet Kaur and Sarita Saini (Department of Human Development and Family Studies, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, Punjab)

Mental health in simple terms is all about how we think, we feel and we behave. It determines our decisions and relations to others. Academic aspiration is also a related concept to mental health which is a big factor of stress in adolescents. ‘Level of aspiration’ means a standard or goal that a person sets for himself and hopes to reach the given performance. The present study was undertaken to examine the impact of educational aspiration on mental health of rural adolescents. The total sample comprised 200 adolescents studying in class 9th to +2 equally distributed across two genders (males=100 & females=100). The results revealed that, major proportion of the adolescents had good mental health with substantial number of adolescents having good overall educational aspiration. Furthermore, significant gender differences were observed at overall adjustment, security-insecurity and self-concept dimensions of mental health where boys were found to have low sense of safety, lacked harmonious balance but had good self-concept as compared to girls. Whereas, no significant gender differences were observed in educational aspiration. Overall mental health was found to be significantly positively correlated with overall educational aspiration. Also, significant positive contribution of educational aspiration was found on mental health.