STATUS OF MENTAL HEALTH OF SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS IN ALIGARH: PROBLEMS AND PREVENTIONS

The secondary school stage is the most important phase of life where students are facing physical, social, mental, family, educational, and personal problems. At this stage, mental health plays a very important role and helps to deal with these types of problems in a very effective way. The Objective of the study is to find the status of mental health of students studying in secondary schools and analyze the obstacles faced by them. The study uses an exploratory research design and purposively selected two schools from Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh district. Total samples of 50 students, out of which 25 were girl and 25 were boy students taken from selective schools. A SDQ questionnaire was formed based on the objective and was distributed among the selected students. The results revealed that more girls than boys report mental health problems. The status of mental health among students at secondary level in Aligarh is not in good condition due to various issues and challenges in terms of misconceptions about mental health, lack of awareness and resources, social, personal, financial, environment and technology-related problems. Mental health problems are common among the senior secondary students in Aligarh. Early detection and effective intervention will result in better development of the futures citizens of our country. Proper orientation and awareness about mental health issues and challenges at the secondary school level will be very helpful for students to cope up with the tense situations and also help in being well-adjusted in family and society. KEYWORDS: Mental health, Secondary school, Problems, Preventions