Vol. 6, Issue 10, Part A (2020)

Abstract
The main objective of the present study was to find the effect of Gender on mental health of adolescents. The study was conducted in Guntur town of Andhra Pradesh. Multistage random sampling was used to select 570 students studying 8^th, 9^th and 10^th standards of selected schools out of which 285 are boys and remaining 285 are girls. Mental health of the subjects was assessed by using Mental Health Inventory (MHI) an adopted version of mental health analysis (Thorpe and Clark, 1959). Results revealed that boys and girls did not differ significantly on overall mental health but significant variation was observed on components of mental health assets and liabilities in which girls exhibited low levels of social participation and high levels of feelings of inadequacy than the boys. Findings of the study suggest that awareness programmes are to be strengthened regarding gender equity mainly insisting on universal access to education, sexual and reproductive health care and equal political and economic participation thus the mental health of the girl child can be enhanced.