Stress and self-esteem in young high school students

Abstract

Introduction The course of adolescence is marked by feelings of insecurity, vulnerability and can be accompanied by the emergence of several mental health problems. Having a good self-esteem brings many benefits such as security, well-being and a strong sense of confidence. Low self-esteem is often accompanied by psychological distress such as stress. Objectives To assess the level of stress and self-esteem in young high school students and to identify the risk factors associated with low self-esteem in these adolescents. Methods This was a cross-sectional, descriptive and analytical study conducted among a sample of adolescents randomly collected in 6 schools in the region of Sfax-Tunisia, during the month of February 2022. The level of stress was assessed using the Lovibond Depression Anxiety Stress Scale (DASS-21) and self-esteem by the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, both scales are validated in Arabic. Results We collected 396 adolescents. The mean age was 16.65+/-0.897 years and the sex ratio was 0.82. Of these adolescents, 102 had stress symptoms according to the DASS-21 scale, i.e. 26% of the sample. Stress was severe to extremely severe in 37.2% of cases. Low to very low self-esteem was found in 65.7% of cases compared to 14.7% with high self-esteem. In addition to the association with high levels of stress in these adolescents (p=0.002), low self-esteem was associated with other psycho-social factors such as intra-family relationship problems (p=0.014), a history of repeating a year (p=0.026), low to average school performance (p=0.027) and behavioural problems in the school environment (p=0.032). Conclusions These results suggest that the association of stress with certain psycho-social factors helps the deterioration of self-esteem in adolescents and vice versa. Having high self-esteem may protect the individual from psychological vulnerabilities such as stress and help him/her to cope with them. Disclosure of Interest None Declared