Personality Profile Differences between Morbid and Morbidity-free Groups amongst Early and Late Adolescents

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Sayantani Chatterjee (Department of Psychology, Loreto College, Kolkata, West Bengal)

Adolescence is a period of storm and stress which is marked by many behavioural anomalies, of which thinking and contemplating about suicide is a major source of concern. Many personality variables and inner vulnerabilities may prompt an individual towards the end of extreme negativity. The present study aimed to determine personality profile differences between morbid and morbidity-free groups amongst early and late adolescents. The scores on the General Health Questionnaire 28 were used to segregate the students into “Morbid” and “Morbidity-free” Groups by the method of Median Split. Results revealed that suicidal ideation, happiness and locus of control differed significantly between morbid and morbidity-free groups for the early adolescents. Morbid group had high scores on suicidal ideation, aggressive humor, self-defeating humor and locus of control. On the other hand, Morbidity-free group scored high on another set of variables like reasons for living, affiliative humor, self-enhancing humor and happiness. For the late adolescent group divided into morbid and morbidity-free groups, the psychosocial variables revealed a similar pattern of mean magnitude values. The two groups revealed significant difference on suicidal ideation, affiliative humor, aggressive humor, self-defeating humor, happiness and locus of control. The results indicate the importance of screening individuals for underlying vulnerability in order to predict other behavioural anomalies.