Mental Health of Young Adults as Predicted by Defense Style and Social Discomfort Level

Mental health is an important aspect of the sound development of people. There is a vast amount of study on mental health but very few studies concentrate on mental health regarding defense style and social discomfort level in the context of Bangladesh. Considering this, the present study aimed to investigate whether there is any impact of defense style and social discomfort level on the mental health of young adult students in the context of Bangladesh. A total of two hundred (200) young adult students were selected by convenient sampling for the study. For obtaining data, the Bangla version of the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ), the Bangla version of the Defense Style Questionnaire (DSQ) and the Bangla version of the Social Avoidance and Distress Scale (SADS) were administered to over 200 university students. A survey research design (Cross-sectional) was used for conducting the present study. After data collection, analysis was done by using correlation and multiple regressions. The results indicate that there is a significant negative correlation (r =–0.17) between mature defense style and mental health, a significant positive correlation (r = .21) between immature defense style and mental health, and finally significant positive correlation (r =0.47) between social discomfort level and mental health at 0.01 level. Regression analysis (R2) indicates that all predictors together account for 29.8% of the total variance in mental health. Among them, social discomfort level uniquely contributes to the highest level (21.10%) which becomes the major predictor of mental health for young adult students. Again, the ANOVA table indicates that the model is overall significant (F199 = 22.33; p < .01). The findings have been discussed in the light of past studies.