The Effect of Mental Health Promotion Program on Psychosocial Adjustment Patterns of Secondary School Students

Abstract

Mental health is a state of wellbeing in which a person can use his or her own abilities and cope with the normal stresses of life. This study aimed to assess the effect of mental health promotion program for secondary school students on their psychosocial adjustment patterns. This study design was a quasi-experimental, conducted at El Mostakbal Integrated Experimental Language School. The study involved 60 secondary school students, divided into two groups each group consisted of 30 secondary school students. Tools of the study involved, 1) An interview questionnaire to assess socio-demographic characteristics, student's knowledge regarding mental health, students` perception about healthy living and their  psychosocial  adjustment patterns in their daily life, 2) Tennessee of Adolescents' Scale to measure the level of student's self-concept, 3) Self-Consciousness Scale to measure the level of student's self awareness and 4) Anger Scale to measure anger state and anger trait among students. These tools were used before and after implementation of the program. The main results showed that, the Implementation of  mental health promotion program for secondary school students had a positive effect on promoting students` mental health concepts  and  psychosocial adjustment pattern. There were  improvements, with highly statistically significant differences between before and after application of mental health  promotion program for secondary school students regarding to their knowledge and perception about mental health and healthy living , level of their self–concept, self awareness, and anger state and trait, their psychosocial adjustment pattern in their daily life. This study recommended that there is a need for developing and implementing  continuous mental health promotion programs for secondary school students to acquire psychosocial skills, empower their personality and promote their psychosocial adjustment abilities and positive behaviors that enable them to deal effectively with the demands, challenges, and stress of everyday life. Also, there is a need for increasing school students' awareness especially at adolescent's stages about aspects of healthy lifestyle through mass media

Keywords: Mental health, promotion program, secondary school and psychosocial adjustment