Family Environment as Determinant of Mental Health among Rural Adolescents

Pages:152-157
Jasvir Kaur, Deepika Vig, and Asha Chawla (Department of Human Development and Family Studies, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, Punjab)

The present study was conducted to study the family environment as determinant of mental health among rural adolescents. The study was based on 200 adolescents (i.e., 100 boys & 100 girls) .The sample was randomly selected from two Government Senior Secondary Schools of villages Bhaini Baringa and Talwandi Rai of Ludhiana district of Punjab. Adolescents living with an intact family and with at least one sibling and grandparent with them were the final respondents. Mental Health Battery (Singh & Gupta, 2000) and Family Environment Scale (Saini & Kaur, 2017) were used to assess the mental health and family environment of the adolescents, respectively. Results of the study revealed that majority of adolescents had very poor mental health and average level of family environment. Gender differences in the overall data with regards to family environment revealed significant differences at average level where proportion of adolescent girls was significantly higher than adolescent boys indicating that girls perceived their family environment to be average in every aspect as compared to male counterparts. Further, most of the family environment related variables were found to be significantly and positively correlated with the mental health of the adolescents except religious orientation, social connectedness and time spent together.