Self-Esteem And Psychological Wellbeing Of Secondary Students In Anambra State, Implication For Sustainable Mental Health And Student Engagement

he study investigated self-esteem and psychological wellbeing of secondary school students in Anambra State, implication for sustainable mental health and student engagement. A correlational research design was employed for the study. The study was guided by two research questions. The population of the study comprised 20,889 senior secondary two (SS2) students (M= 9,411 and F=11,478) from public secondary schools in Anambra State. The sample for this study comprised 763 SS 2 students made up of 396 males and 367 females, drawn using multistage sampling procedures. For the data collection, the researcher adapted two sets of instruments namely; the Self-Esteem Evaluating Rating Scale (SEERS) developed by Gopal (2016), and the Psychological Well-being Scale (PWS) developed by Ryff (1989). The face validations of the instruments were established by three experts. The internal consistency of the items for each instrument was determined using Cronbach Alpha and coefficient values of 0.81 was obtained for self-esteem, and 0.86 for psychological well-being. The collected data were analyzed using multiple regression analysis. The study also showed that self-esteem and psychological well-being are strong predictors of sustainable mental health of male senior secondary school students in Anambra state, while a moderate predictor of the sustainable mental health of female senior secondary school students in Anambra state. The study suggests that enhancing student engagement through strengthening self-esteem and psychological well-being could promote sustainable mental health. Based on the findings, it was recommended among others that, Post Primary School Service Commission should train and post qualified guidance counselors to secondary schools to help senior secondary school students strengthen their self-esteem and psychological well-being for enhancement of a sustainable mental health