Impact of parenting approaches on adolescents’ mental well-being: a cross-sectional study

Abstract

Background: Mental health disorder is a major public health problem across the world. It encompasses a wide range of disorders that are generally characterised by a combination of abnormal thoughts, perceptions, emotions, behaviours and relationships with others. Common mental disorders include depression, anxiety and stress. Recognizing the burden on families, particularly those affected by parental mental illness, highlights the need for family-focused interventions in India. Objectives were to study the prevalence of mental health disorders among adolescents (aged 13-16 years) in higher secondary schools and to determine the extent of parental involvement and association between adolescents’ mental health disorders and parental involvement. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted from July to October 2025 (4 months) among higher secondary school students of class 8th, 9th and 10th aged (13-16 years) from government schools of Raichur taluka. Four schools were selected from urban area of Raichur using lottery method and 310 participants were recruited using systematic random sampling. The questionnaire consisted of three parts: sociodemographic data, the parental authority questionnaire and depression, and the anxiety and stress scale (DASS-21).   Results: In our study, majority of the participants were having authoritative parenting style (40.49%), 35.69% of the participants were shown to have a permissive parenting style, 36.56% were having Authoritarian/ flexible parenting style. Conclusions: In this study it was found that 36.56% of the parents of study subjects were authoritative. Significant association was found between permissive and authoritarian parenting styles with students having anxiety and stress.