GRATITUDE AND MENTAL HEALTH- A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF SCHOOLS STUDENTS

Abstract

The objective of the study was to examine the effect of gratitude on mental health among school students. The present study was conducted on 60 school students (30 boys and 30 girls) in the age range of 16-18 years. Students were selected from two different government schools in Delhi. Data was collected using the standardized Gratitude Questionnaire (GQ-6; McCullough, M. E., Emmons, R. A., Tsang, J., 2002) and the Mental Health ContinuumSF (Keyes, C. L., 2009). To analyze the data, an independent sample‘t’ test was applied. Data analysis revealed a significant difference between low and high gratitude groups in total mental health (p=0.01). Significant differences were found for all three dimensions (emotional, social, and psychological well-being) of mental health, with the high gratitude group showing higher scores on all three dimensions, as well as on mental health as a whole, in comparison to students who scored low on gratitude. Thus, it can be concluded that students with high gratitude levels had significantly better overall mental health than those who were low in gratitude.