Awareness on psychosomatic health among adolescent girls of three schools in north Kolkata.
BACKGROUND
Psychosomatic health of adolescent girls at crossroads of childhood and mature adulthood, may lead to various health problems in future.


OBJECTIVE
To determine the improvement in the knowledge and attitude on health among adolescent girl students of Kolkata after the health education intervention.


METHODS
This 'Health Education Intervention Study' was conducted in October and November 2006, in three senior secondary schools of North Kolkata. The Simple Random Sampling Technique was applied to select three schools from the spot map of North Kolkata for this study, and 282 girl students in the adolescent age group of 13 to 19 years were selected from the completed updated list of students from the enrollment registers in these schools.


RESULTS
The mean age of the participants was 15.7 years (±1.8 years). This health education intervention showed a significant improvement in their knowledge on adolescent health, in the aspects of sex differences in pubertal spurts, probable causes of health problems during adolescence, physical changes in adolescent boys and girls, and psychological problems of adolescence. A significant improvement in positive attitude was observed, with regard to their opinion on substance abuse in the adolescent period and importance of sex education for adolescents.


CONCLUSIONS
This study revealed some unknown parts of psychosomatic health among adolescent girls, in this part of India.
Department of Community Medicine, Midnapore Medical College, West Bengal, India.
Palas
P
Das
Ranabir
R
Pal
Shrayan
S
Pal
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