Effects of Academic Stress and Perceived Social Support on the Psychological Wellbeing of Adolescents in Ghana

Copyright © 2013 Franklin N. Glozah. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The purpose of this study was to examine how academic stress and perceived social support influence the psychological wellbeing of Senior High School students in Ghana. Two hundred and twenty six male and female students participated. The general health questionnaire, student life-stress inventory and perceived social support from family and friends scales were used to assess psychological wellbeing, academic stress and perceived social support respectively. The re-sults indicated that perceived social support buffered the effects of academic stress on psychological wellbeing. Girls reported higher scores on perceived social support but reported more depression. Boys reported higher academic stress and better psychological wellbeing, and these have been attributed partly to the socialisation role of gender. These re-sults have policy implications in respect of the creation of a cordial school environment as well as encouraging a healthy interpersonal relationship between adolescents and their family and friends with the aim of reducing academic stress appraisal which is inimical to the psychological wellbeing of adolescents