Correlates of psychosocial status of rural adolescent girls of varanasi, India

This study was conducted to pinpoint the correlates of psychosocial status of adolescent girls adopting comprehensive scoring system of WHO’s ‘HEEADSSS’ approach. Psychosocial status of 400 rural adolescent girls of Varanasi District, India, who were selected by multistage sampling, was assessed by interviewing them with the help of predesigned schedule. For inferential decisions t-test and ANOVA were applied. In order to pinpoint precise correlates logistic regression analysis was done. Majority of the adolescent girls were at risk of developing psychosocial abnormalities, and nearly one out of ten were at severe risk. Several factors were found significant in univariate analysis. However, logistic regression identified subjects from SC (OR=3.520, CI=1.829-6.773) and other caste category (OR=3.493, CI=1.843-6.623), as well as joint family (OR=3.207, CI=1.330-7.728) at higher risk of psychosocial abnormality. Findings of this study calls for community based interventions directed to adolescents and their families having higher vulnerability for psychosocial abnormality.