A Study on the Relation Between Self Esteem and Mental Health in Middle School Students

청소년의 자아존중감과 정신건강에 관한 연구

The purpose of this study was to find out the relationship between self-esteem and mental health in Middle school students, and provided basic data to develop a nursing program for the prevention of mental disease and the promotion of mental health in adolescence. Subjects were 153 students in the third year of three middle schools located in K city. Instruments used in this study were the self-esteem questionnaire developed by Choi, B. K. & Jun, G. Y.(1993) and the simplified SCL-90 developed by Lee, H. K.(1986) for measuring mental health. Data were analyzed by Cronbach's alpha, descriptive statistics, t-test, ANOVA, Pearson's correlation coefficient by using SPSS/PC+ program. It was found that the mean score of the self-esteem was 3.20. The score of self-esteem in family was high and the score of self-esteem in school was low. The mean score of mental health was 1.94. The scores of depression, obsessive-compulsive and interpersonal sensitivity were high, the scores of phobic anxiety and somatization were low. There were significant differences among religions (F=2.709, p= .032), and between personalities (t=-2.285, p= .024) with respect to self esteem. There were no significant differences between general characteristics variables and mental health. However there was significant negative correlation between the mean self-esteem score and the mean mental health score (r=-.431, p= .000). In conclusion, mental health is strongly related to self-esteem. If and adolescent who suffers from mental health is not received proper treatment, his or her mental health prohibits him from managing sound social life even after grown-up. Thus, nursing intervention in adolescence should be developed to enhance the self-esteem of adolescence and to help him raise sound mind.