Social Helping: Relation with Mental health, Self esteem and Meaning in life in different stages of adulthood: Category: Oral Paper Presentation

The present study examined psychological factors associated with helping behaviour. Study attempts to see the effect of age and gender on wellness, distress, personal meaning and self-esteem amongst helpers contributing time or money to orphanage or old age home and non-helpers. The sample consisted of 624 men and women between 30-60 years of age, comprising of 312 social helpers and 312 non helpers divided into early, middle and late adulthood. The PGI Wellness Scale, General Health Questionnaire-12, Wong’s Brief Personal Meaning Profile and Rosenberg’s Self Esteem Scale were individually administered to the participants. Multivariate analysis of Variances MANOVA was used for statistical computation. Results indicate that there is a significant effect of age on helping behaviour in terms of distress and personal meaning. Distress is high in early adulthood whereas personal meaning in life was found to be high in middle adulthood. In terms of gender, it was noted that females have significantly high level of stress while males have significantly high personal meaning and self-esteem. Implications are discussed in terms of prosocial behaviour contributing to mental health of helpers and its possible contribution in mental health recovery.