Relationship Between Perceived Obstacles, Learned Helplessness and Mental Health of Youth From Western Maharashtra

Varghese (2025) presents a doctoral investigation into how perceived obstacles shape learned helplessness and mental health among vulnerable youth in Western Maharashtra. Building on social-cognitive and learned helplessness frameworks, the study shifts the analytical lens from external economic determinants to internal psychological barriers, arguing that young people's interpretations of constraints are central to their emotional outcomes. A mixed-method design (N = 758) integrates survey data and qualitative narratives from three "at-risk" groups: school dropouts, unemployed youth, and divorcees, sampled from both urban and rural contexts. Quantitative analyses indicate that perceived obstacles emerge as a significant and consistent predictor of learned helplessness across gender and locality, suggesting that feelings of powerlessness are more tightly linked to subjective appraisals of barriers than to structural indicators alone. Qualitative findings deepen this picture by illustrating how chronic exposure to stagnation, social stigma, and repeated failure experiences consolidates defeatist beliefs, erodes hope, and normalizes withdrawal from opportunity structures. Together, the results reframe youth mental health in contexts of socioeconomic stagnation as a function of internalized constraints rather than merely material deprivation. The dissertation argues that policy interventions focused solely on jobs, skills, or financial support are necessary but insufficient to break cycles of helplessness. It calls for a dual-policy approach that couples economic measures with deliberate psychological re-conditioning and hope-building strategies—such as cognitive reframing, strengths-based counselling, and future-oriented mentoring—to restore agency, resilience, and a sense of possible futures among vulnerable youth. Available at: http://hdl.handle.net/10603/615025