Pubertal Changes and Mental Health: The Mediating Role of Body Image Dissatisfaction in Adolescent Girls

The current study was designed to investigate the relationship of pubertal changes experienceswith psycho-social factors in adolescent girls of Pakistan. A cross sectional study design wasused to conduct this research. A large sample of adolescent girls (N=906) was selected frompublic and private Schools. All girls were selected from grade 7th, 8th and 9th through stratifiedrandom sampling. Data Collection was done in the months of April, 2018- May, 2019. PubertalChanges Experience Scale (Tasleem et al., 2020), Mental Health Inventory (Bashir & Naz,2013), Body Dissatisfaction Scale (Tariq & Ijaz, 2015), Alabama Parenting Questionnaire (Frick,1991) were used in the data collection process. The hypothesis testing was done through PearsonProduct Moment Correlation and Mediation. A positive correlation between emotional distress atthe time of puberty, body dissatisfaction and psychological distress was found. Moreover,emotional distress has inverse correlation with psychological wellbeing of adolescent girls. Bodyimage dissatisfaction was significantly positively correlated with psychological distress andnegatively correlated with psychological well-being. The factor of body image dissatisfactionemerged as a mediating variable between pubertal changes experiences and mental health ofadolescent girls. It is also established in the study that pubertal changes influence social role ofadolescent girls and psychological distress. The current study provided an empirical evidenceabout emergence of body dissatisfaction as a mediating factor between negative pubertalexperiences and mental health of adolescent girls at the time of puberty.