Efficacy of School-Based Life Skill Training to Boost MentalHealth Status and Well-Being of Young People

Abstract

This study aims to assess the efficacy of school-based life skills training on mental health status and wellbeing of young people. A classical experimental research design with control group and random sampling method were used. The study population comprises 720 school going young people (both girls and boys in the age group of 16 to 19yrs) from six higher secondary schools in Ernakulam Educational district of Kerala, India. The respondents were selected on the basis of inclusion and exclusion criteria. Informed written consent was obtained from the participants prior to the study. The respondents weresequentially assigned into intervention group and control group with 360 each for determining the effect of the intervention comparatively. The standard tools administered to evaluate the mental health status and wellbeing in three-time lines are: GHQ-28 and WEMWS-14 respectively.

Researcher conducted life skills training to the intervention group after pre- intervention. The same assessment tools were administered for post-intervention (one – three months) and follow -up intervention (six- nine months) to evaluate the impact of intervention on mental health and well-being. The current version of Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) was used to analyze the data and correlations were obtained. Repeated Measures Analysis of Variance (RMANOVA) was performed to test whether there is any significant effect due to intervention in the scores. Independent sample t-test was used to compare the equality of baseline scores of various components. Data were analyzed by descriptive and inferential statistics in three-time lines under different sections. The result shows that there was highly significant intervention effect between the scores of mental health status and wellbeing. The p value is less than 0.05 (normal value) the null hypothesis rejected and alternate hypothesis accepted i.e., intervention is effective.