Familial and Personal Predictors of Mental Well-Being of in-School Female Adolescents in Ado-Ekiti Nigeria

Nigeria has one of the largest population of adolescent girls in the world and most of them are exposed to adverse outcomes arising from economic deprivations and entrenched gender inequalities and social norms that disadvantage women compared to men. The country has a national policy on the health and development of adolescents and young people, but little or no research, advocacy or programmes are in place to promote the mental well being of adolescents. Using scales for measuring self-reported mental well being and physical health adapted from previous studies, we investigated the personal and familial factors associated with the mental wellbeing of in-school female adolescents in Ado-Ekiti, Southwest Nigeria. Data were obtained from in-school female adolescents aged 10-19 years old in Ado-Ekiti, the capital of Ekiti State, Nigeria. The respondents were randomly selected from four purposively selected secondary schools. Using a formula for deriving a small sample when population is known, a sample size of 383 was derived from a population of 1656 female students in the four schools. With 10% added to adjust for non-response, a total of 421 students were involved in the study. Categorizing the mental well being scores into a tertile, 11.3% reported poor mental well being, 51.7% moderately good and 37.0% good. Younger adolescents ages 10-14 were more likely to report poor mental well being than their older counterparts aged 15-19 years old. Multiple regression models revealed the following significant predictors of mental wellbeing among the respondents: working to earn a living (β= -8.04 p<0.01), good physical health (β=7.9 p<0.001), polygynous (β= -6.28 p<0.10) and single parent (β= -6.74 p<0.01) households. The results underscore the need for more studies with wider coverage and programs to promote adolescent mental health, particularly targeted at the vulnerable categories identified in this study.