The relationship between mental health and academic achievement among Kordestan high school students

Objective: Academic achievement is one of the important factors to which parents, teachers and society pay attention and also, it is related to students' mental health. The main objective in the present study was to determine the relationship between students' mental health and their academic achievement.

Method: The sample of this study was 1662 high school students (765 males and 908 females) in the age range of 14-19 years. The sampling method of this study satisfied random sampling. Also, data were gathered by using the GHQ-28. The GHQ-28 is an instrument to determine mental health and it includes four scales measuring depression, anxiety, somatization and social function. The reliability of this scale is 0.91 by Cronbach's alpha.

Results: The results of the present study showed that 45.4% of the respondents had a lack of mental health. Based on the results of the current study, the low rate of lack of mental health (42.2%) was in the first grade of high school while, the high rate of loss of mental health were among Pre-University students. In addition, the results from the present study indicated that there is significant relationship between the education of the respondents' father and students' mental health (p<=.0.001). According to the present study, there was a significant difference between gender and mental health (p<=.0.001).

Conclusions: Various factors such as self-esteem, motivation, anxiety, attention and concentration, gender, study curriculum and mental affective situations impact on academic achievement. As a result all of the mentioned factors are related to mental health directly or indirectly. So, it is suggested to investigate the mental health and also types of mental disorders among students in of Iranian schools especially among high school students.

Note: The sponsor of present study is the Education Office in Kurdistan Province.