Parenting Pattern Leads to Adolescents’ Depression through Academic Load in Competitive and Regular Course Examinations (original) (raw)

Multidisciplinary Research Journal of European Academic Research

Abstract: Attributed to biological and hormonal changes, adolescence ensures psychosocial, behavioural, and sexual maturation. Adolescents’ performance in academics specifically during preparation for senior secondary examination and competitive examinations is attributed to a significant number of factors that often jeopardize children, adolescents and youths world over. During this phase of life, students are in double bind—being challenged by variety of mental and physiological changes; and being pressurized by substantial amount of academic (disproportionate) loads/burdens due to preparation for senior secondary school examination and competitive examinations. Based on available researches conducted earlier ( being cited later part of the article), it may be concluded that academic stress, anxiety disorder, suicidal ideation and planning, parenting style/pattern, lack of mother-child (healthy) interactions are commonly and frequently studied variables in relation to adolescents depressive disorder by researchers in India and abroad. Interestingly, reviewed literature (from 2001 through 2014) fails to reveal any systematic attempt in which depressive behavior is examined through academic performance across parenting styles/patterns of adolescents who are preparing for competitive examinations. Though academic stress as one of the most frequently studied variables, without analyzing and examining academic load of competitive and regular examinations, it seldom possible to predict any sort of kinship between depression and academic stress— since preparation for senior secondary examination seeks subjective orientations on every concept of each subject undertaken for the studies; and competitive examinations, by and large demand objective orientations of some common subjects (aligned with school curricula) along with some extra papers (these are either subjects or courses/combination of subjects). Drawing experiences from literature (studies that are being cited later part of the article), researchers hypothesize “a significant kinship exists between parenting pattern and depressive disorders of adolescents who are taking up regular and competitive examinations”; which was verified through a study on 300 adolescents of Pathankot city of Punjab. Being designed with descriptive survey method, data were collected with the help of Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-II;1996) and Parenting Pattern Scale (Bharadwaj et.al.;1995); and collected data were further analyzed with the support of Pearson’s Coefficients of Correlation. The study being documented by Lovely Professional University mentions prevalence of severe and moderate level of depressive disorder demonstrated by 10% and 30% of adolescents respectively. The result of the study established low negative relationship between parenting pattern and depression; and it is implicit that better parenting pattern, lesser is the depressive experiences, and poor parenting pattern leads to depression. Keeping association between parenting pattern/style and depressive disorder, the study recommended that parenting through family life education could help parents in nurturing mental health of adolescents during preparation for competitive examinations. Depressive disorder is pervasive and has become a critical challenge since adolescents and young adults (youth) population is projected to be highest by 2016-20, therefore scholars of this article advocated certain strategies that are believed to be having healing effects and it is concluded that unless policies are well practiced, not only depressive disorders but also other forms of mental disorders will continue to have their ill-effects on our society by raising individuals that cause national wastage, in terms of not being able to produce and seeking support and welfare measures that put unwanted burden on public funds and governance. Key words: Parenting pattern, depression, academic performance, and competitive examinations.