Prevalence of Emotional Maturity and Effectiveness of Counselling on Emotional Maturity among Professional Students of selected Institutions at Mangalore, South India

Introduction: No one is born with emotional maturity; it is shaped by our upbringing and life experience. A hallmark of it is maintaining self management during times of stress. Counselling is the intervention which is needed for the professional students to overcome the problems such as anxiety, fear of future, hopelessness and adjustment issues to lead a life fruitfully. Aims: Are to find the prevalence of emotional maturity level among professional students and to determine the effectiveness of counselling on emotional maturity from the selected professional institutions. And to find the association between emotional maturity with selected demographic variables. Materials and methods: A descriptive, true experimental research design with an evaluative research approach was adopted. The data was collected through Singh and Bargave’s Emotional Maturity Scale and demographic proforma. Intervention was given for 8 consecutive weeks to the students who were identified with average to low emotionally mature based on issues of counselling checklist. Results: The study revealed that; the prevalence rate of emotional maturity (Average to low) was 63.38%. The Emotional maturity was re-measured in the 9th week, and the difference due to the application was determined by comparing the pre test, post test measurements. There was a statistically significant (P ? 0.001) reduction in the mean scores of emotional maturity among the subjects from the pre intervention to immediate posttest assessment. A significant association was found with education status of mother, parent’s health status and history of mental illness in the family with emotional maturity and values are p?0.05. The counselling was very effective in improving the emotional maturity level of the students. Key words: Prevalence, Emotional Maturity, professional students, Counselling