An Investigation of the Relationship Between Positive and Negative Mental Health Factors and Academic Performance Among Early Adolescent Girls

Abstract

The transition to adolescence is considered to be a period filled with increased turmoil, often disrupting youth's psychological well-being and resulting in numerous poor outcomes. This study examined the relationship between aspects of mental health and students' academic performance and their beliefs about their academic capabilities among a normative sample of middle school girls. Measures of mental health problems as well as emotional strengths were included. Forty middle school girls from two schools were included in this study. Sixteen of the participants attended a small, predominantly White private school and the remaining 24 students attended a larger and more diverse public school. Pearson correlations were run with the entire sample and at the two schools separately to identify the relationship between the mental health variables and the academic outcomes. Results indicated that mental health functioning was significantly related to students' feelings about their academic abilities, such that students reporting high levels of distress reported more negative attitudes about their own abilities and students reporting high levels of emotional strengths reported more positive academic attitudes. The psychological variables were not, however, correlated with students' true performance on math and reading tests. Results were more pronounced at the more diverse public school than they were at the small private school. These results suggest that more comprehensive screening procedures that look at students' psychological and academic functioning may be important to better understand students' needs and to provide appropriate school-based interventions. This study also examined the effectiveness of a school-based depression prevention program, the Girls in Transition program, which is designed to promote resiliency among middle school girls. Students at the two schools were randomly assigned to receive the intervention immediately (n = 17) or were put into a wait-list control group (n = 20). Data were collected at three separate times: before the intervention began, immediately following the intervention, and at a six-month follow-up period. Paired samples t-tests and one-way ANOVAs were run to examine changes in the study variables over time for each group and group differences at both follow-up periods. Results revealed that students who participated in the program reported increased use of adaptive coping strategies at both follow-up periods. They also reported reductions in symptoms of anxiety and anhedonia and increases in social self-efficacy. Scores among students in the wait-list control group remained stable, though two unanticipated findings were observed. Differences between the two groups at either follow-up period were not detected. Despite evidence of a relationship between mental health factors and academics, participants did not demonstrate gains in any of the academic measures included in this study. Results from this study offer encouraging support for the effectiveness of the Girls in Transition program, though they were severely limited by small sample sizes and high attrition rates.