Mental health of single parents

Pages: 373-376
Lata Pujar, Krutika Chanda, and Divya. D. Hittalamani (Department of Human Development and Family Studies
College of Community Science, University of Agriculture Science, Dharwad, Karnataka)

Single parenting is a situation in which one of the two individuals either mother or father is solely responsible for the upbringing of their children. Thus the study is taken up with an objective to know the problems and mental health of the single parent and to know the relationship between age, SES with mental health. The data was collected from four villages of Dharwad taluk during the year 2017-18. The samples were 15 female single parents from each village who were randomly selected. Totally the sample comprised of 60 female single parents. The criterion for selecting the female single parent was that they should have at least one child/ children aged from 0-25 years. The data was collected through door-to-door survey using the tools like the structured questionnaire was used to collect personal information and problem faced by the single parents. The socio-economic status of the family was assessed by using socio-economic status scale developed by Agaarwal et al. (2005) and mental health inventory developed by Jagadish and Srivastava (1983) to know the mental health status of the individual. The results revealed that that 70 per cent reported death of their spouse was one of the reasons for being single parent followed by divorce in 16.67 per cent and 13.33 percent were separated. About 93.33 per cent of single parents faced financial problems while 53.33 per cent of them were getting support from their parents followed by relatives, children, friends, co-workers. In the present study majority of the single parents had poor mental health (48.33 %) and very poor mental health (40 %) . There was significant relationship and association between the age, SES with mental health.

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