Author(s): Mridula Gautam

Abstract:
Adolescence has been identified as a period in which young people develop thinking abilities, become more aware of their sexuality, develop a clearer sense of psychological identity and increase their independence from parents. Adolescence is a period of immense psychological, social changes and challenges. The proportion of different psychological and social problems as perceived among adolescents and to find the psychological and social problems, sexual orientation, drug abuse and physical problems among them. This was a community-based mixed method study conducted in schools situated in the field practice area of different type of School of urban area of Aligarh District of Uttar Pradesh. The Study population consisted of high and higher secondary school adolescents of class 10^th to 12^th including those who were present on the day of study. The study was undertaken from the month of August 2015 to October 2015 for a period of three months. The mean age of all the respondents was 16 year which ranging from 15 to 17 years. Most of the adolescent males perceived stress followed by depression to be the major mental problems their routine life, while the females faced loneliness followed by anxiety as major psychological problem. The adolescents prefer education (29.81%) as their first priority followed by making career (29.62%) ranked as two. The male respondents admitted body built (38.71%) and beard problems (30.97%) major physical and sexual concern. The Female respondents admitted body built and breast size to be major physical and sexual concern. The various challenges faced by the adolescents include peer pressure (41.18%) which appeared to be the top most challenges faced by them. Among the adolescents, conflicted relationship with parents and generation gap were the biggest reason for problems in their family.