DOI: 10.36347/sjams.2014.v02i05.020

Pages: 1601-1605

The mental health wellbeing of single children has assumed relevance in the face of increasing single child families’ world over. This study was done on engineering college students using DASS questionnaire. The Depression, Anxiety and Stress level were assessed among single and non-single individuals. It is a 42-item questionnaire, divided into subscales of 2-5 items with comparable content to measure the negative emotional states. The Depression scale assesses dysphoria, hopelessness, devaluation of life, self-deprecation, and lack of interest/involvement, anhedonia, and inertia. The Anxiety scale assesses autonomic arousal, skeletal muscle effects, situational anxiety, and subjective experience of anxious affect. The Mean ± SD of Depression, Anxiety and Stress level for singles and non-singles were ; Depression-14.9 ± 9.2 (Normal: 0-9), Anxiety-13.3 ± 7.3 (Normal: 0-7), Stress-18.8 ± 7.5 (Normal: 0-14) and 16.9 ± 8.5, 15.4 ± 6.8, 22.1 ± 5.9 respectively, showing that non-single individuals have more of these negative emotional states, even though percentage wise Anxiety and Stress levels were more commonly seen in single individuals and Depression showed no difference. Thus this study we highlighted that single individuals were not having more negative emotional states when compared to non-single individuals.