Adjustment Difficulties in Adolescence Essay
Adjustment Difficulties in Adolescence Essay
Adjustment disorders can be described as a group of conditions that can occur when you have difficulty coping with a stressful life event. In adolescence it is mostly witnessed when they are passing from childhood to adulthood. The inability to adjust to the stressful event can cause an adolescence to have severe psychological symptoms and sometimes even physical symptoms. These can be eating disorder, depression, suicide.
Eating Disorder
Eating disorders can be viewed as a condition characterized by irregular eating habits and severe distress or concern about body weight or shape. Eating disturbances may include less or excessive food intakes which can finally affect the individuals wellbeing.
Role of Control
Adolescence exercising control can take the correct amount of food without fear of gaining weight. In youth, power in helps the individual not to lose control in his or her eating habits. Adjustment Difficulties in Adolescence Essay.
Lack of Control
Lack of control in youths affects their eating behaviors and hence the development of some eating disorder. Eating too much food or lack of monitoring will make them have the fear of gaining excessive weight hence affect their health. It can also enhance their ability to refuse to take food so that it may not damage their body image.
Depression
Role of control
In adolescence control helps to adjust to the stressful event. Adolescents who are in control will never act anxiously or have a withdrawn attitude as this will avert a depression. Adolescence having control will never lack concentration, have loss of self-esteem or cry anyhow. These help them to know how to be sure of themselves and the changes occurring to them and hence avert a depression.
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Lack of control
Adolescents who are undergoing lack of control will always feel the loss of self-worth and eventually cause depression. They will exhibit some behavior such as acting rebellious or impulsive and feel like the whole world hates them .this can lead to the depressed individual. Without control, they will always feel sad, hopeless or even trapped .this can cause the engage in behavior that their result is depression.
Suicide
Treating oneself as an object, having a self-image that is negative, as well as hopelessness are among the many features that has been linked with suicide. Control will help adolescents to be cautious his or he action .with control one will never use whatever is available to him like the firearm to commit suicide. With control, a one will not indulge in drugs and acute or chronic alcohol. This will make the individual be alert always of his or her actions and avoid suicide
Lack of Control
Lack of o control will elevate the dangers associated with suicide in adolescence.Adjustment Difficulties in Adolescence Essay. They may have negative self-image which can lead to the individual committing suicide. Without control the youth can engage in drug and alcohol which makes the individual to be trapped in intoxication which can trigger suicidal thoughts.
Concerns of Clinicians and Researchers
Clinicians and investigators are concerned with adolescence who suffers from the above problem since they can have damaging health effects, like brain damage, many-organ failure, bone loss, heart difficulties, and infertility. These can eventually cause death. These disorders make the person behave in a unsocial manner and cannot integrate with the society effectively. They can also require help which can be either medical, counseling therapy. These problems can make the adolescence useless in the society. When the individual engages in alcohol or drugs, he becomes intoxicated making him inactive and of no value to the society.
While the definition of adolescent can differ from culture to culture, it is generally accepted that the time referred to as adolescence is the period between childhood and adulthood, a sort of “no man’s land.”
Geldard and Geldard (2006) explain that adolescence is a time in a young person’s life where they move from dependency on their parents to independence, autonomy and maturity. The young person begins to move from the family group being their major social system, to the family taking a lesser role and being part of a peer group becomes a greater attraction that will eventually lead to the young person to standing alone as an adult.
Adolescence is a period that extends over a substantial part of a person’s life. However, each adolescent experiences individual changes and growth at differing rates, with some moving through the adolescent phase quicker and more smoothly than others. Some adolescents have supportive families, others face this daunting period of their lives alone. Some adolescents may remain at home with their families, but their families are emotionally distant so the adolescent can feel as if they are “alone in a crowd”. Adjustment Difficulties in Adolescence Essay.
No-one can deny that for any one person facing changes in their lives in the biological, cognitive, psychological, social, moral and spiritual sense, could find this time both exciting and daunting. With the increase in independence comes increases in freedom, but with that freedom, comes responsibilities. Attitudes and perspectives change and close family members often feel they are suddenly living with a stranger.
Biological Challenges
Adolescence begins with the first well-defined maturation event called puberty. Included in the biological challenges are the changes that occur due to the release of the sexual hormones that affect emotions. Mood changes can increase, which can impact on relationships both at home with parents and siblings and socially or at school.
Cognitive Challenges
Piaget, in his theory of social development believed that adolescence is the time when young people develop cognitively from “concrete operations” to “formal operations”. So they are able to deal with ideas, concepts and abstract theories. However, it takes time for confidence to build with using these newly acquired skills, and they may make mistakes in judgement. Learning through success and failure is part of the challenge of the learning process for the adolescent.
Adolescents are egocentric, they can become self conscious; thinking they are being watched by others, and at other times want to behave as if they were on a centre stage and perform for a non existent audience. For example, acting like a music idol, singing their favourites songs in their room, with all the accompanying dance steps. Adjustment Difficulties in Adolescence Essay.
Adolescents live in their private world where they may think they are invincible and cannot be hurt. However, this could also be because at their age, they have not had to deal with many deaths and the mortality of the human spirit is not a reality yet. This is all a part of the complex process of becoming a separate and unique individual.
Unfortunately, these beliefs can lead them to believe that no-one is capable of understanding them, or know how they are feeling. This aspect could have important implications for counsellors.
Psychological Challenges
The psychological challenges that the adolescent must cope with are moving from childhood to adulthood. A new person is emerging, where rules will change, maybe more responsibilities will be placed on him/her so that a certain standard of behaviour is now required to be maintained. Accountability is becoming an expectation from both a parental and legal concept.
During adolescence the process of individuation occurs, which involves the development of relative independence from family relationships, with the weakening ties to objects and people who were previously important to the young person, coupled by an increased capacity and societal expectation to assume a functional role as a member of adult society.
As adolescents continue their journey of self-discovery, they continually have to adjust to new experiences as well as the other changes happening to them biologically and socially. This can be both stressful and anxiety provoking.Adjustment Difficulties in Adolescence Essay. It therefore is not surprising that adolescents can have a decreased tolerance for change; hence it becomes increasingly more difficult for them to modulate their behaviours which are sometimes displayed by inappropriate mood swings and angry outbursts.
Recently, schools have drawn attention as dominant factors for psychosocial development of students. Nepal, however, has limited studies on this issue. This study sought to assess the prevalence of psychosocial dysfunction and its association with family-related factors among adolescent Nepali students.
Methods
Taking 787 adolescent students from 13 schools of Hetauda municipality, we accomplished a cross-sectional study. A set of structured questionnaire and Y-PSC was adopted to collect data, which were analyzed using SPSS with 95% of confidence interval.
Results
One-fifth (17.03%) adolescent students suffered with psychosocial dysfunction. Male students (9.50%) were more affected, compared to female students (7.80%). The proportion of psychosocial dysfunction rose with the rise in age group and grade. Frequency of family dispute was significantly associated with psychosocial dysfunction OR = 13.24 (95% CI: 2.27–17.23).
Conclusion
Interventions on psychosocial dysfunction need a great start, targeting adolescents, their caregivers, and community stakeholders, with a special emphasis on the school setting.
Introduction
Adolescence is the transitional stage of development between childhood and adulthood, representing the period of time during which a person experiences a variety of biological and emotional changes. Hall denoted this period as “Storm and Stress” and states “conflict at this developmental stage is normal” (1). During this period, adolescents suffer from various forms of problems/dysfunctions and conflicts, which ultimately impair normal psychosocial development aggravating psychosocial dysfunction.
Researchers have tried to define psychosocial dysfunction in many ways, but confusion remains. However, understanding regarding psychosocial dysfunction concludes that it is a state of emotional and behavior disorders synonymous with internalizing and externalizing conditions, respectively. Most common disorders include depression and anxiety (internalizing disorders), and delinquency, aggression, educational difficulties, and truancy (externalizing disorders) (2). Adolescence is mainly affected by home and school environments. Schools play a vital role in the development of an adolescent, as they spend much time attending school, engaging in extracurricular activities, and completing scholastic work at home. School represents an institution that contributes to the overall educational and socialization processes, critical in personality development of an adolescent (3).
Globally, 1 out of 10 (20%) adolescents encounter at least one behavioral problem. Half of lifetime mental disorders begin before the age of 14 years, and 75% begin by the age of 24 years (4, 5). Studies completed in Canada and USA have shown that mental health among the adolescent population is a public health issue (6, 7).Adjustment Difficulties in Adolescence Essay. In developing countries, such as Nepal and other south-Asian countries, scenario of mental health and its care system is worse than compared to developed countries. Similarly, there is also a lack of mental health-related evidence in Nepalese context; available evidence from hospital settings does not represent the situation accurately, and this situation highlights lack of serious effort on adolescent health. In the Indian context, 14–40% of adolescent students are assumed to have mental health problems (2, 8, 9).
Lack of attention to the mental wellbeing of children and adolescents, in a key phase of socialization, may lead to mental health consequences that may remain throughout life and reduces the capacity of societies’ socioeconomic productivity (4, 10). More precisely, it can be claimed that proper psychosocial development of adolescent is reflected with sound academic performance, physical health and adequate social, emotional, and psychological health. This ultimately contributes in reducing the risk of psychosocial and behavioral problems, violence, crime, teenage pregnancy, and misuse of drugs and alcohol (11–14). Detection of psychosocial dysfunction in the early adolescence can be fruitful for the quality of life of the individual.
Therefore, this study aimed to estimate the magnitude of psychosocial problem/dysfunction and its relationships with family-related factors among adolescent students residing in the central region of Nepal. Findings from this study are expected to bring out hidden and neglected public health issues, which could help to increase the attention of health planners and programmers to develop sufficient adolescent mental health program. Adjustment Difficulties in Adolescence Essay.
Materials and Methods
Study Design, Setting, and Population
We conducted a school-based cross-sectional study in Hetauda Municipality, a centrally located town in Makawanpur District of southern Nepal. Hetauda is the administrative headquarter of Nepal’s central development region, with a population of 84,671 (15). The study included the adolescent students from age 11 to 19 years.
Variables of Study
Primary Outcome Variable
Psychosocial Problems/Dysfunction
For this study, respondents with score ≥30 in the overall score of 70 in the Youth-Pediatrics Checklist (Y-PSC) were considered as having psychosocial dysfunction.
To identify psychosocial dysfunction of adolescent students, a self-administered structured questionnaire Y-PSC was used. Self-administered structured questionnaire consisted of questions related to social-demographics and family. Pediatric Symptom Checklist (PSC) is a psychosocial screening checklist designed to facilitate the recognition of cognitive, emotional, and behavioral problems. Two versions of PSCs are available: parent completed version and youth self-report version. For the purpose of this study, Y-PSC was used. The Y-PSC form consists of 35 items, rated as “Never,” “Sometimes,” or “Often present,” and scored 0, 1, and 2, respectively. Item scores were summed so that the total score is calculated by adding together the score for each of the 35 items, with a possible range of scores from 0 to 70. If one to three items were left blank, they were not counted (score = 0). If four or more items were left blank, the questionnaire was considered invalid. The total score is re-coded into a dichotomous variable with cut-off score of 30, indicating presence of psychosocial dysfunction or not. This cut-off score of ≥30 is based on a similar study conducted in the Indian context as Nepal shares similar social and cultural systems with its southern neighbor (2, 6). Adjustment Difficulties in Adolescence Essay.
English version of the self-administered and PSC questionnaire was translated into Nepali language and then translated back into English with the help of an English language expert. Psychiatric consultation was done to assure the validity of the Nepali and English questionnaires. Pretesting was carried out among 10% of the total sample size (n = 78) and Cronbach’s alpha was calculated (r = 0.75). Following pretesting, necessary modification was made to the questionnaires.
Predictor Variables
Variables related to adolescents and families were considered as independent variables of interest. The presence of psychosocial dysfunction among adolescent students was considered as dependent variables. Operational definitions for the variables in this study are as below.
Secondary, Lower Secondary, and Higher Secondary Level Education
Adolescents who were studying in grades 6 and 7 were considered lower secondary level studying students and adolescents studying in grades 8, 9, and 10 were considered secondary level students. Adolescents in grades 11 and 12 were considered higher secondary level studying students.
Nuclear and Non-Nuclear Family
Families consisting of only one generation of family members were considered nuclear families. Any other family type was considered a non-nuclear family.
Living with Single/Both Parents
Adolescent students who reported living with either their father or mother only were considered adolescent students living with single parents. Those students who were living with both their father and mother were considered as adolescent students living with both parents.
Mother Engaged in Work
Adolescents whose mothers were engaged in any work other than household activities were considered as mother engaged in other work. Those mothers who were only engaged in regular household activities were considered as a mother not engaged in work.
Pocket Money
Money provided by parents or guardians for purposes other than tuition fees and academic purposes was considered as pocket money. Adjustment Difficulties in Adolescence Essay.
Parent (Father/Mother) Literacy
Adolescent students who reported that their parent(s) (father/mother) were able to read and write in English or Nepali were considered as literate parents.
Sample Size and Sampling Technique
The sample size was determined by using the formula for a random sample of cross-sectional studies, i.e., sample size (n) = Z2 p q/d2 (16).
Where n is the sample size, Z is the statistic corresponding to the level of confidence, i.e., 1.96–95% confidence interval (CI), p is expected prevalence (obtained from same studies or a pilot study), and d is the precision (corresponding to effect size). The level of confidence typically aimed is 95%; most researchers present their results with a 95% CI.
For this study, the prevalence of psychosocial dysfunction (p) = 0.20 (2), q = (1 − p) = 0.80, and precision (d) = 0.15.
Adding, 10% non-response, the calculated sample size was 787. Simple random sampling was used to select students for the study. A list of all the schools of Hetauda municipality and the number of students was maintained with data provided by the District Education Office (DEO), Makawanpur. Out of 57 schools, 13 schools were selected randomly. There were seven private schools and six government schools. A sampling frame of all students from the 13 schools was created from the list provided by the DEO. Using computer-generated random numbers, 787 were then selected.
Data Analysis
The collected raw data were first coded, entered into an excel sheet, and the master chart was maintained in SPSS 16 version software. Subsequently, univariate, bivariate, and multivariable analyses were performed. Bivariate analysis was done to assess the relationship between dependent and independent variables. Adjustment Difficulties in Adolescence Essay Significant independent variables (p-value <0.2) were considered for multivariable analysis. Prior to multivariable analysis, the multicollinearity test was done. Binary logistic regression was employed for multivariable analysis, as the dependent variable was dichotomous. Binary logistic regression with the enter method was used to find out the significant variables at level of 0.05% and the CI of odds ratio (OR) was calculated.
Ethical Consideration
Ethical approval for the study was obtained from the Institutional Ethical Review Board (IERB) of B.P. Koirala Institute of Health Sciences (BPKIHS). Written consent was obtained from the heads of the schools prior to data collection. The purpose of the study was relayed to parents or guardians 1 day before data collection through the respondents. Respondents were informed that they were free to abstain or to withdraw from participation at any time. Adjustment Difficulties in Adolescence Essay.
