Influence of Academic Stress and Home Environment on Adolescent Mental Health

Background and Objectives: According to UNICEF, 20% of teenagers worldwide suffer from mental health issues. This study aims to evaluate the impact of the family environment and academic stresson the mental health of adolescents. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among late adolescents aged 17-19 years studying in Pre-University Colleges (PUCs)of Udupi Taluk. Multi-stage sampling technique was adopted and a list of all the PUCs in Udupi Taluk was obtained and was stratified into Government, Aided, and Unaided PUC. A total of 385(n) students were taken and equally divided by the total number of colleges to be taken from each stratum, each selected PUC class was randomly selected as a group. From a class, all students were taken up for the study. Results: Academic stress was found to be statistically significant with the type of college management (p-value 0.001), depression, and anxiety (p-value 0.001). Anxiety was statistically significant with gender. Out of 50.4% of girls participants, 8.9% had extremely severe anxiety, and 11.2%had severe anxiety. Academic stress influenced mental health (p-value 0.001). Conclusions: The present study revealed that the prevalence of academic stress was 45.7%. The association between academic stress and anxiety, depression and stress are highly statistically significant with a p-valueof 0.001. There is an association between depression and anxiety reports with highly statistically significant results with a p-value of 0.001. Academic stress, gender, and the choice of combination of other subjects were statistically associated with mental health. Students from all the streams were found to have stress. Major Findings: This study evaluated the impact of family environment and academic stress on the mental health of adolescents in Udupi Taluk. A cross-sectional survey of 385 students aged 17-19 revealed that academic stress significantly affected mental health, with strong associations with anxiety, depression, and gender. The study found that 45.7% of students experienced academic stress, which was significantly linked to poor mental health outcomes.