Mental Health: A Personality Analysis Exploring the Influence of Neuroticism

Mental health is found to be reinforced by personality traits and among the Eysenck’s personality traits Neuroticism has a significant inverse influence on the behaviour. The current study examines the influence of neurotic personality dimension on the mental health among the youth in Kerala. The participants consisted of 211 undergraduate students between 18 to 24 years. The data were collected using the Mental Health Inventory and Eysenck’s Personality Questionnaire-R, and analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Results of MANOVA revealed that mental health of youth significantly differ based on neurotic dimension of their personality. The mean mental health index score was low among the high neurotics compared to the low neurotics. The results of Discriminant Analysis showed that among six dimensions of mental health, anxiety and, loss of emotional and behavioural control contribute more to discriminate the high and low Neuroticism groups. On an average, 73% of subjects originally grouped as belonging to high and low Neuroticism groups were correctly classified. The findings suggest the need for incorporating personality as a core variable in mental health promotion and illness prevention approaches to account for individual differences in thinking, feeling and behaviour.