A STUDY ON NNHS STUDENTS’ MENTAL

HEALTH AWARENESS IN NAVOTAS

NATIONAL HIGH SCHOOL

A Research Paper

Presented to the English Department

NAVOTAS NATIONAL HIGH SCHOOL

M. Naval St., Sipac Almacen, Navotas City

By:

Fonacier, Louvisse Tyrone Z.

Crehencia, Calvin John Z.

Bautista, Carl Joseph R.

Martin, Princess Anne V.

Sumayao, John Ross L.

Cunanan, Josh Daniel M.

Tulayba, Kimberly Anz G.

10 – Love

S.Y. 2019 - 2020

 CHAPTER 1

THE PROBLEM AND REVIEW OF THE RELATED LITERATURE

INTRODUCTION

Mental health is a state of well-being in which a person understands his or

her abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully,

and can make a contribution to his or her community. Mental health is the successful

performance of mental function, resulting in productive activities, fulfilling relationships with

other people, and providing the ability to adapt to change and cope with adversity. The term

mental illness refers collectively to all diagnosable mental disorders—health conditions

characterized by alterations in thinking, mood, or behavior associated with distress or

impaired functioning.

Mental illness is a recognized, medically diagnosable illness that results in the

significant impairment of an individual's cognitive, affective or relational abilities. Mental

disorders result from biological, developmental and/or psychosocial factors and can be

managed using approaches comparable to those applied to physical disease.

Awareness is the acceptance and understanding of something, in part of whole. It

means learning about mental illness and being familiar with the vernacular of the movement.

It means accepting the medical nature of it and not asking that people “get over it,” when the

solution is much more complex. As its finest, awareness also involves advocacy.
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

HISTORY

In the mid-19th century, William Sweetser was the first to coin the term "mental

hygiene", which can be seen as the precursor to contemporary approaches to work on

promoting positive mental health. Isaac Ray, the fourth president of the American Psychiatric

Association and one of its founders, further defined mental hygiene as "the art of preserving

the mind against all incidents and influences calculated to deteriorate its qualities, impair its

energies, or derange its movements".

Dorothea Dix (1802–1887) was an influential figure in the growth of the "mental

hygiene" movement. Dix was a school teacher who aimed to help people with mental

disorders and to expose the sub-standard forms into which they were put. This became

recognized as the "mental hygiene movement". Ere this movement, it was not unusual that

people affected by mental illness would be considerably ignored, often left alone in poor

conditions without satisfactory clothing.

At the start of the 20th century, Clifford Beers established "Mental Health America –

National Committee for Mental Hygiene," after publication of his accounts as a patient in several

lunatic asylums, A Mind That Found Itself, in 1908 and opened the first outpatient mental health

clinic in the United States.

From the perspectives of positive psychology or of holism, mental health may include

an individual's ability to enjoy life and to create a balance between life activities and efforts

to achieve psychological resilience. According to the World Health Organization (WHO),

mental health includes "subjective well-being, perceived self-efficacy, autonomy,

competence, inter-generational dependence, and self-actualization of one's intellectual and

emotional potential, among others". The WHO further states that the well-being of an

individual is encompassed in the realization of their abilities, coping with normal stresses of

life, productive work, and contribution to their community.

PERSPECTIVE TOWARDS THE MENTAL BEING OF CHILDREN AND YOUNG ADULTS

Mental health can be seen as a delicate continuum, where an individual's mental

health may have many diverse possible conditions. Mental wellness is generally seen as a

positive attribute, even if the person does not hold any diagnosed mental health condition.

This definition of mental health highlights emotional well-being, the ability to live a full and

creative life, and the versatility to deal with life's coming challenges. Some studies are

expressed in terms of comfort or peace. Many healing systems and self-help books offer

methods and beliefs promoting strategies and techniques vaunted as efficient for further

improving mental wellness.

Mental health and balance is a very important agent in a person’s everyday life.

Communicative skills, behavioral skills, and someone’s way of thinking are just some of the

things that the human brain develops at an early age. Learning how to communicate with

others and how to focus on certain subjects are vital lessons to learn. This crosses from the

time we can talk to when we are so old that we can barely walk. However, there are some

people out there who have difficulty with these kinds of skills and behaving like an ordinary

person. This is most likely the cause of having a mental illness. A mental illness is a wide

range of conditions that affect a person’s mood, thinking, and behavior.

Stigma is also a well-known factor in mental illness. Stigma is defined as, “a mark of
humiliation connected with a particular time, quality, or character.” Stigma is used especially

when it comes to the mentally disabled. People have this theory that everyone with a mental

problem, no matter how mild or severe, is automatically considered harmful or a felonious

person. Thanks to the media, this idea has been planted in our brains from a young age.

Watching movies about teens with depression or children with Autism makes us think that all

of the people that have a mental illness are like the ones on TV.

EMOTIONAL IMPROVEMENT

Unemployment has been shown to harm an individual's emotional well-being, self-

esteem and more broadly their mental health. Increasing unemployment has been shown to

have a significant impact on mental health, predominantly depressive disorders. This is an

important consideration when reviewing the triggers for mental health disorders in any

population survey. To improve your emotional mental health, the root of the issue has to be

resolved. "Prevention emphasizes the avoidance of risk factors; promotion aims to enhance

an individual's ability to achieve a positive sense of self-esteem, mastery, well-being, and

social inclusion."

TREATMENT

Archaeological records have shown that trepanation was a procedure used to treat

"headaches, insanities or epilepsy" in several parts of the world in the Stone age. It was a

surgical process used in the Stone Age. Paul Broca studied trepanation and came up with his

theory on it. He noticed that the fractures on the skulls dug up weren't caused by wounds
inflicted due to violence, but because of careful surgical procedures. "Doctors used sharpened

stones to scrape the skull and drill holes into the head of the patient" to allow evil spirits that

plagued the patient to escape. Several patients died in these procedures, but those that

survived were revered and believed to possess "properties of a mystical order".

For some people, physical exercise can improve mental as well as physical health.

Playing sports, walking, cycling or doing any form of physical activity trigger the production

of various hormones, sometimes including endorphins, which can elevate a person's mood.

Studies have shown that in some cases, physical activity can have the same impact as

antidepressants when treating depression and anxiety.

Moreover, cessation of physical exercise may have adverse effects on some mental

health conditions, such as depression and anxiety. This could lead to many different negative

outcomes such as obesity, skewed body image, lower levels of certain hormones, and many

more health risks associated with mental illnesses.

Activity therapies, also called recreation therapy and occupational therapy, promote

healing through active engagement. Making crafts can be a part of occupational therapy.

Walks can be a part of recreation therapy. In recent years coloring has been recognized as an

activity which has been proven to significantly lower the levels of depressive symptoms and

anxiety in many studies.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

According to Scheff (2013), it is proposed that most symptoms of mental illness are

products of shame and relational feedback loops: emotion and alienation can both spiral

leading to further alienation and chaotic or hidden emotions. Some mental disorders are a

major source of distress, disability, and social burden, and many people who could benefit

from treatment do not receive it (Mechanic 2003). How data are gathered and how diagnoses

are made, as many as 27% of some population groups may be suffering from depression at

any one time (McLeod 2015). According to Reiger (2003), it is hard to dismiss the impact on

parents and families that psychoanalytic disease theories have had in assigning blame to

schizophrenogenic mothers, when the only causal mechanism considered for all mental

disorders, on a continuum from mild anxiety conditions to schizophrenia, was a reaction to

early childhood development and child-rearing experiences. Most mental disorders at that

time still lacked a single universally acknowledged pathogenesis (Malik & Beutler 2002).

Individuals with social anxiety tend tk overestimate the threat of social interactions, the

likelihood of negative outcomes, and the consequences of negative outcomes (Huppert, Roth

& Foa 2003). According to Seligman (1973),"depression as the commin cold of psychiatry

because of its frequency of diagnosis." According to Meehl (1973), when clinicians felt that

they understood a patient, the patient seemed normal; that is, "understanding it makes it

normal.” Critics of clinical diagnostic practices have long observed that clinicians tend to rely

upon intuitive thinking in making diagnoses and predicting outcomes for individual patients,

rather than making statistically based diagnoses (Dawes, 1994; Garb, 1998; Meehl, 1954;

Meehl, 1973). Clinicians’ concepts of mental disorders are actually quite theory-based rather

than theory-neutral (Kim & Ahn, 2002). According to Zachar and Kendler (2007), domain of
mental disorders is more like the domain of biology, where the category boundaries are not

clear-cut and the taxonomy is not based on category essences. Relative paucity of information

about etiology in the DSM, mental health clinicians are cognitively driven to seek out causal

explanations and are influenced by these explanations (Kim and Ahn, 2002). One-quarter of

Americans suffer from a clinical mental disorder in any given year, and nearly half of these

are diagnosed with two or more disorders (Kessler, Chiu, Demler, & Walters, 2005).

According to Adewuya and Makanjuola (2008), in South Eastern Nigeria found that their

participants attributed mental illnesses more to external than internal causes. We are quite

unlikely to ever come up with any etiologically based taxonomy for mental disorders because

they are highly complicated and multiply determined (Zachar & Kendler, 2007). The

participants in their study preferred ‘sharing and talking through their distresses as a cathartic

and helpful strategy.’ (Meyer & Garcia-Roberts, 2007). In Ghana, for instance, participants

mentioned issues such as unhealthy living conditions, lack of social support, relationships

problems, society pressures, loneliness, and failure in life as reasons for becoming mentally

ill (Kyei, Dueck, Indart, Nyarko 2014).

SCOPE AND LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY

This study focuses on the level of awareness in junior high school students

especially grade 10 students. The data collection will be conducted to 100% of the total

population in grade 10 of Navotas National High School, School Year 2019 - 2020 who will

represent the population. This study will not cover other problems that are not considered as

part of this research. The other grade 10 students which do not fall as part of it are not

within the scope of this research. The study would be done through the utilization of

questionnaire to the students as a survey and reference. By their strategy the researchers will

be able to know the level of awareness in the personality and performance of grade 10

students.
CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

Mental health assessment

Delirium
Dementia Individual
Schizophrenia Resiliency
Mania and other psychoses Health status
Depression and mood disorder Nurturing childhood
Violence
Anxiety, phobias panic attack and other
neuroses
Personality disorder and character traits

Family Community
Parenting style Social networks
Income Workplace
Relationship Community involvement

Society
Inequality
Political participation
Discrimination and stigma
STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

This study aimed to analyze the moral reasoning, particularly the level of awareness

of grade 10 students at Navotas National High School, situated at M. Naval St., Sipac-

Almacen, Navotas City.

Specifically, this study sought answers to the following questions:

1. What is the level of awareness of the respondents towards Mentally ill people?

2. What is stigma of the respondents about Mentally ill people?

3. What is the common reason why people suffer from mental illness?

4. Is suicide a common thing for mentally ill people to do?

5. Are Mentally ill people having trouble with communicating with others?
DEFENITION OF TERMS

Emotional improvement - The key skills for building your EQ and improving your ability to

manage emotions and connect with others are: Self-management. Self-awareness. Social

awareness. Relationship management.

Illness - a disease or period of sickness affecting the body or mind.

Health - Health is a state of physical, mental and social well-being in which disease and

infirmity are absent.

Behavior - Behavior or behaviour is the actions and mannerisms made by individuals,

organisms, systems or artificial entities in conjunction with themselves or their environment,

which includes the other systems or organisms around as well as the physical environment.

Stigma - a mark of disgrace associated with a particular circumstance, quality, or person.

Awareness - knowledge or perception of a situation or fact.

 CHAPTER 2

METHOD

This chapter is concerned with the methodology that will be employed to carry out the

study. It provides a detailed description of the participants that will be sampled, the

instruments and procedures that will be used in collecting the data, the methods that were

employed in processing the data, as well as the statistical analysis which will be applied in

the study.

Research Locale

The study was conducted in Navotas National High School located at Navotas City,

The history of Navotas National High School dates to 1983 when Mayor Victor Javier

conceived of founding a school whose aim was to provide free but quality education to

children of Navotas. Formerly known as Navotas Municipal High School, the school found

its place into a 2,255-square meter land area near the police headquarters, where the National

Manpower Education Building was located. Through the quiet and relentless efforts of the

mayor and the community, classes were opened on June 1983 with only 180 students and

seven (7) faculty members headed by its first principal, Dr. Cecilia M. Saenz. Two years after

its opening, there was an overwhelming increase in student population. Mayor Javier

extended all the possible assistance to look after the welfare of the students. He ordered the

construction of four rooms at the sports complex to temporarily house the additional eight

sections. Faculty members were likewise, increased to twenty-two (22).

However, with the turn of events in the political system, Mayor Felipe C. Del Rosario,

Jr. took Mayor Javier’s post. The new OIC painstakingly continued all the objectives and

hard work left by the former mayor. A new four-room building was put-up. In 1987, the

school produced its first batch of graduates.

 The implementation of Free Secondary Education in 1990 signalled the tremendous

overflow of students to the school. The school’s population increased to 4,460. To help ease

the problem of lack of classrooms, Engr. & Mrs. Pascual Roque donated another four-room

building. In addition to this an eight-room elementary school building was turned over to

NNHS to cope with the increasing number of students.

Because of the government’s thrust in democratizing access to education, the local

government put-up a ten-room building at Tangos (Tangos Annex). To cope with the growing

number of students, the school, with the support of LGU, NGO, and other organizations, the

creation of several annexes in Navotas namely NNHS Tulay Annex, NNHS San Roque

Annex, NNHS Kaunlaran Annex, NNHS San Rafael Annex, and NNHS Tanza Annex saw

fruition. All of these annexes eventually became independent national high schools under the

leadership of the respective principals.

When Dr. Saenz was promoted to principal IV, she was transferred to Malabon National

High School and Mrs. Lucila O.de Guzman took over her post. She retired from the service in

2000, Dr. Rosa G. Centeno was assigned as the new principal. She spearheaded the special

science curriculum in S.Y. 2004-2005.

It was during this time when Dr. Saenz was assigned back to NNHS as principal while

Dr. Centeno was transferred to Malabon National High School. The retirement of Dr. Saenz

in November 24, 2008 paved the way for the designation of Dr. Maria Cristina A. Robles as

the new school principal of Navotas National High School.

NNHS was given an Excellence in Educational Transformation Award in 2012 by the

Bayan Academy.

At present, NNHS has three thousand six hundred fifty-three (3,653) students and one

hundred thirty-nine (139) faculty members from all learning areas.

 Vicinity Map of Navotas National High School,

M. Naval St., Navotas City 1485, Philippines

Research Design

The descriptive method of research, with the use of a Likert scale on Students’ Mental

Health Awareness Scale, was used in conducting this study. According to an article by

University of South Carolina, a descriptive research design helps provide answers to the

questions of who, what, where, when, and how associated with a particular research problem;

a descriptive study cannot conclusively ascertain answers to why. Descriptive research is

used to obtain information concerning the status of the phenomena and to describe “what

exists” with respect to variables or conditions in a situation.

One hundred (100) Grade 10 students in Navotas National High School were used as

respondents in this study. They were chosen by random sampling method using Slovin’s

Formula identifying one hundred (100) out of four thousand (4000) students with 5% (0.05)

margin of error.
Research Instrument

The research instrument of this study is a survey questionnaire in a form of a Likert

Scale. There were two sets of questionnaires. The first one is the Demographic Profile which

includes the Age and Gender.

The second set measured their level of acceptance using the Homosexual Attitude

Scale which was constructed and validated by M.E. Kite and K. Deaux in their study in 1986.

1 as STRONGLY AGREE, 2 as AGREE, 3 as NEUTRAL, 4 as DISAGREE, and 5 as

STRONGLY DISAGREE in the original scale by Kite and Deaux.

The students’ Mental Health Awareness Scale assesses stereotypes, misconceptions,

and stigma towards Mentally-illed people uni-dimensionally (favourable or unfavourable)

using a Likert design. Participants rate each of the twenty-one items from 1 Strongly Agree

to 5 Strongly Disagree. The author has stated that the measure is reliable concerning either

homosexual males or females.

The measure contains a unidimensional factor representing a favourable or

unfavourable evaluation of mentally-illed people. The scale has excellent internal consistency

(alphas >.92). It has a good test-retest reliability (r= .71).

These two sets of questionnaires were used by the researcher/s in gathering data for

this study:

Part I. Demographic Profile of the Respondents- It consists of two items that identify their

Age and Gender

Part II. Awareness Scale- The questionnaire is composed of twenty-one structured items

which focuses on assessing the level of awareness of the respondents towards mental health,

and it is scored by a 5-point Likert scale.

Respondents of the Study
The researcher’s target participants were one hundred (100) Grade 10 students in

Navotas National High School. They were chosen by random sampling method identifying

one hundred (100) out of four thousand (4000) students. The researcher used fishbowl

technique to identify the one hundred (100) respondents of this study. The purpose of this

study is to find out particularly their level of awareness towards Mental Health.

Data Gathering Procedure

The researcher/s secured permission from the principal and guidance counsellor of

Navotas National High School regarding her intent to conduct a survey to the selected

student-respondents. After finishing all the necessary letters to be presented, the researchers

explained the purpose and instructions to answer the survey questionnaires. The responses of

the participants were tallied and computed based on the Statistical Formula to identify the

aligned results.

The analysis of the result of the survey will be done to determine the level of

awareness of the respondents towards Mental Health.

Statistical Treatment of Data

The researcher employed descriptive statistics in the data treatment. Particularly;

Percentage. The percentage is used to determine the quantitative relation to the whole

response. The process of gathering the percentage was dividing the frequency by the total

number or respondents. To compute for the percentage;

% = f/n*100

WHERE:

f – number of occurrence observed

n – number of respondents

WEIGHTED MEAN:

WHERE:

(sometimes called the x-bar) is the symbol for the mean

∑ (the Greek letter sigma) is the symbol for summation

X is the symbol for the scores

N is the symbol for the number of scores

CHAPTER 3

RESULT AND DICUSSION

This chapter presents the analysis of data obtained through a survey using a

questionnaire pertaining the specific problems of this study. In this chapter, tables are being

presented to back up the study that was conducted by the researcher.

I. Profile of the Respondents

Table 1

Age Frequency %
Below 14 3 3%
15 45 45%
16 45 45%
Above 17 7 7%
Total 100 100%

Gender Frequency %
Male 37 37%
Female 63 63%
Total 100 100%

This table shows the Profile of the respondents. The total number of respondents is

one hundred (100).

As to age. The respondents whose age is below 14 years old (14) are three (3) that

comprises three percent (3%) of the total number of respondents. Forty-five (45) student-

respondents are fifteen years old (15) that comprises forty-five percent (45%) of the total

number of respondents. Meanwhile, there are forty-five (45) students who are sixteen years

old (16) that comprises of forty-five percent (45%) of the total number of respondents. There

are seven (7) respondents that are seventeen years old and above (17) that comprises seven

percent (7%) of the total number of respondents. Thus, most of the selected students range

from fifteen (15) to sixteen (16) year old.

As to gender, there are thirty-seven (37) male student respondents that comprises

thirty-seven percent (37%) of the total number of respondents. On the other hand, there are

sixty-three (63) female student respondents which comprises sixty-three percent (63%) of the

total number of respondents. Therefore, most of the respondents are female students.
Table 2

WM 2.21 2.34 2.65 2.84 2.78 2.83 2.19 3.81 2.94 2.18 2.14 2.15 2.14 2.31 3.30 3.04 3.08 2.56 2.85 3.17

Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q5 Q6 Q7 Q8 Q9 Q10 Q11 Q12 Q13 Q14 Q15 Q16 Q17 Q18 Q19 Q20

PERCENTAGE SA SA SA SA SA SA SA SA SA SA SA SA SA SA SA SA SA SA SA SA

25% 16% 9% 10% 5% 11% 27% 5% 6% 21% 23% 19% 19% 25% 2% 9% 4% 44% 10% 12%

A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A

42% 48% 38% 32% 36% 25% 39% 18% 29% 50% 52% 60% 58% 31% 19% 25% 23% 9% 26% 21%

N N N N N N N N N N N N N N N N N N N N

22% 24% 36% 30% 38% 37% 24% 10% 44% 22% 15% 11% 15% 36% 41% 30% 43% 34% 40% 26%

D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D
7% 9% 13% 21% 18% 24% 8% 25% 11% 4% 8% 7% 6% 4% 23% 25% 21% 8% 17% 21%

SD SD SD SD SD SD SD SD SD SD SD SD SD SD SD SD SD SD SD SD

4% 3% 4% 7% 3% 3% 2% 42% 11% 3% 2% 3% 2% 4% 15% 11% 9% 5% 7% 20%

The table shows the tabulation of the responses of the participants in the survey

questionnaire. Each column shows the response in percentage and how each response differs

from one another as identified by the weighted mean (WM).

It aims to identify whether the selected student-respondents has high-level of

awareness towards mental health.

S1: MENTAL ILLNESS IS A PROBLEM

SA A N D SD

4%

7%
25%

22%

42%

The figure above shows the participants regarding statement 1 in the survey

questionnaire by Kite and Deaux (1986). 42% of the respondents agree with the statement

that says “Mental Illness is a problem” with a weighted mean of 2.21. This result corresponds
to statement 8 (the figure below) of the survey questionnaire “Mental illness is just a joke”

with 42% of the respondents answered strongly disagree with a weighted mean of 3.81.

S8 "MENTAL ILLNESS IS JUST A JOKE"

SA A N D SD

5%

18%
42%

10%

25%

The figure below shows the results regarding statement about “Mentally ill people

tend to commit suicide.” 42% of the respondents agree that mentally ill people tend to

commit suicide with a weighted mean of 2.34.

S2 "MENTALLY ILL PEOPLE TEND TO COMMIT

SUICIDE"
SA A N D SD

3%

9% 16%

24%

48%

This also correspond with statement 7 (the figure below) from the survey

questionnaire “Stress may lead to depression” with 39% of the respondents agree with the

statement with a weighted mean of 2.19.

 S7 "STRESS MAY LEAD TO DEPRESSION"
SA A N D SD

2%

8%
27%

24%

39%

Based on our research too much stress or chronic stress can lead to major depression

yet 10% of people suffer from depression without the trigger of a stressful event.

S12 "MENTAL ILLNESS AFFECTS

COMMUNICATION TO OTHERS"
SA A N D SD

3%

7%
19%
11%

60%

The figure above shows the results of statement 12 in the survey questionnaire

“Mental illness affects communication to others” with 60% of the respondents answered

agree with a weighted mean of 2.15. This also corresponds to statement 15 “Its better to shut

up that to open up” with 41% of the respondents agree nor disagree with the statement.