Psychosocial support and parents’ social life determine the self-esteem of orphan children

Parental death affects the life of children in many ways, one of which is self-esteem problems. Providing psychosocial support and equipping orphans play a vital role in their lifes. A cross-sectional study was conducted on 7–18-year-old orphans at 17 local districts of Gamo Gofa Zone, Southern Regional State of Ethiopia. From a total of 48,270 orphans in these areas, 4,368 were selected using stratified simple random sampling technique. Data were collected with a designed questionnaire based on the Rosenberg’s rating scale to measure their self-esteem levels. Self-esteem with a score less than or equal to an average score was considered to be low self-esteem in the analysis. Binary logistic regression model was used to analyze the data using the SPSS software. The results of the study revealed that the probability of orphans suffering from low self-esteem was 0.59. Several risk factors were found to be significant at the level of 5%. Psychosocial support (good guidance, counseling and treatment, physical protection and amount of love shared, financial and material support, and fellowship with other children), parents living together before death, strong relationship between parents before death, high average monthly income, voluntary support, and consideration from the society are some of the factors that decrease the risk of being low in self-esteem. There are many orphans with low self-esteem in the study areas. The factors negatively affecting the self-esteem of orphans include the lack of psychosocial support, poor social life of parents, and death of parents due to AIDS. Society and parents should be aware of the consequences of these factors which can influence their children’s future self-esteem.