Effectiveness Of A Health Counselling Module For Reducing Psychological Distress Among Adolescents In The Educationally Backward Block Schools

This study aimed to understand the psychological distress among adolescent students from the schools in the educationally backward blocks in the Salem district of Tamilnadu and further develop and apply a health counseling module to reduce the identified psychological issues among them as many research on adolescent always called for specific interventions to reduce their stress and enhance their psychological wellbeing. Consisting of screening and intervention the two phase study approached 120 of such students in the first phase with an adolescent psychological distress questionnaire of which 120 were found with complete data. Results revealed that, there is a significant difference found among educationally backward block school students with respect to gender and mobile phone usage in the issues involving anxiety and in the rest of the dimensions there were no such differences found. In the Phase two One-group pretest-posttest was employed to check the effectiveness of the health counseling module that was administered on 58 students who consented to undergo the intervention.  The module was found effective in reducing the anxiety related issues and, however, there were no differences between pre- and post-intervention scores of other issues.