Assessment of Social Functioning among Adolescent School Children in Manipur: A Cross-sectional Study

Background: Globally 10-20% of adolescents experience mental health disorders. The greater part of disease being subclinical, identification has been a big challenge. Social functioning impairment is a sensitive indicator of underlying mental disorder. It forms a baseline for early identification of mental disorders. Objectives: The study plans to assess the social functioning skill and its associated factors among adolescent school children. Methods: The study was conducted among 3200 school-going adolescents studying in class 9th to 12th attending government and private schools located in Imphal-East and Bishnupur districts of Manipur recruited by stratified random sampling technique. The Child and Adolescent Social and Adaptive Functioning Scale (CASAFS), a validated tool consisting of 24 items designed to measure psychosocial functioning, was used. Descriptive and analytical statistics were generated taking p < 0.05 as level of significance. Results: A total of 25 schools were sampled with females constituting 52.3%. Overall 21.8% had good social adaptive functioning skills whereas 29.6% showed poor skills. Around 36.3% showed poor performance in ‘peer relationship domain’ and 27.1% showed poor performance in ‘self-care/ home domain’. Socio-demographic variables such as age, gender, number of siblings, and education of parents were found to be significantly associated with having ‘good social adaptive functioning skill’(p < 0.05). Conclusion: A significant proportion of adolescents face psychosocial issues in their day to day life. Improving social skills will be an effective intervention to reduce mental disorders.