Abstract

Punam Kunwar Thapa* and Jayalaxmi Shakya

ABSTRACT

Adolescence is the crucial period in human development, demanding significantadjustment to the biological, social, psychological and cognitive changes whichmakes them vulnerable to mental health problems. Psychosocial problems exhibitas iceberg phenomenon and are hidden public health problems if left untreated, maylead to psychopathology and antisocial behavior which will directly affect theoverall development of the individual adolescent and whole country. Thus thisstudy was conducted to identify the psychosocial problems among adolescentstudents and its association with the selected variables. A descriptive cross sectionalresearch study was conducted among 220 adolescent students studying in grade 8, 9and 10 in private school of Bharatpur, Chitwan by using stratified proportionaterandom sampling technique. A structured interview schedule and youth pediatricsymptom checklist-17 (YPSC-17) was used to collect the data. Obtained data wereentered into IBM SPSS 20 and were analyzed using both descriptive and inferentialstatistics. The prevalence of psychosocial problems among adolescent students wasfound to be 23.6% percent. Significant association of psychosocial problems wasfound with sex (p=.001), ethnic group (p<.001), religion (p<.001), living status(p=.026), father’s occupational status (p<.001) and mother’s occupational status (p=.045). Based on findings it is concluded that nearly one fourth of the adolescentstudents have psychosocial problem. Hence, effective health related programmescan be implemented for the prevention, earlier recognition and management ofpsychosocial problems for the adolescent students.