Psychological Well-Being and Anxiety among Adolescents Analysis along Wellness: Illness Continnum

Objective of the study was to analyze the psychological well-being and anxiety among 153 adolescents selected from 5 higher secondary schools of Kerala. Taking into account previous findings, that “negative affect” always co-occur with anxiety while “positive affect” gets reflected in the outcomes of psychological well-being measurements and the “bipolar” and “bi-variate” views about the relationship between two, pattern of interaction between anxiety and psychological well-being was studied in detail. Psychological well-being scale by Devendra Sing Sisodia and IPAT-Anxiety scale by Samuel King were used for data collection. Statistical tests Pearson-correlation, t-test, single factor ANOVA and linear-regression were executed with the help of SPSS version-20. 88.8% of adolescents were moderate and 10.4% were high in their psychological well-being. Mean anxiety of the sample was 36.3 which indicated moderate level of anxiety. Adolescents in urban& rural areas, aided& private schools, and males& females hadn’t any significant difference in their mean psychological well-being or anxiety as per t-test. Age of participants hadn’t any significant correlation with psychological well-being but that with covert anxiety(r=.3,p<.00) was highly significant. Extremely significant difference in the mean psychological well-being of group of students categorized according to their levels of anxiety was observed in ANOVA results (F(2,152)=9.4333, P=.0001). Significant negative correlations between the sub-variables of psychological well-being and anxiety, ranging from (r= -.37) to(r=-.20) was observed except for “sociability”. Anxiety which is usually characterized by physiologi -cal hyper-arousal could incur significant variation in“satisfaction” (R²=.13,F=23.18,P<.00),“efficiency”(R²=.08,F=14.08,P<.00),“sociability”(R²=.003, F=.517,not-sig.), “mental health”(R²=.14,F=24.50,P<.00) and “interpersonal relations”(R²=.04,F=6.60,P<.01) of psychological well-being variables as per regression analysis. Major implications are in adolescent counselling & psychotherapy and future investigations focusing on illness-wellness continuum.