Association of corporal punishment and Psychological factors among secondary school Students in Dar es salaam

Abstract

Corporal punishment is the mostly debated topic worldwide especially among parents and education systems. Historically, corporal punishment has been used as a disciplinary method for ensuring the young generation is living and raised within acceptable morals and traditions.The most given forms of corporal punishments given to students in secondary schools in Tanzania are canning, pinching, beating, pulling ears and forcing children to stay in uncomfortable positions. There is, however, minimal information of the associations between such punishments and the psychological distressamong secondary school students. Of particular interest for psychological distress are the syndromes of depression and anxiety, as an internal resource that may buffer against psychological decompensation; these consequences may have negative outcomes on psychological health. Due to these possible consequences of an approach to disciplining, a gap is identified suggesting need to examine corporal punishment and its associations with psychological distress. Objectives: To determine the associations between experience of corporal punishmentand symptoms of anxiety and depressionamong secondary school students in Kinondoni Municipality Dar-es-Salaam. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional study, multi-stage sampling which involved randomly selection of 406 participants in 10 purposively selected secondary schools in Kinondoni Municipality, Dar -es-Salaam Tanzania. The structured questionnaire adopted from Thomas Ndwiga (Measure Corporal Punishment) and Standardized tool (Hopkin symptom checklist- Anxiety and depression symptomatology was used. Analysis done by using SPSS V.20 Results Data from 406 recruited participants were analyzed.Female adolescents constituted 209 (51.5%) of all participants. The mean age (Standard Deviation) of the participants was 16.0 years (1.38), with the oldest being 19 years and the youngest 13 years. Most 333 (82%) participants in the study reported experiencing corporal punishment. The forms of corporal punishment reported most by participants was canning 405 (99.8%), kneeling down 396 (97.5%), doing push-ups 378 (93.1%) and being asked to frog-jump 334 (82.3%). Prevalence of psychological distress was 355 (87.4%)Furthermore, there was associations between corporal punishment and psychological distress (p=0.02) Conclusions and recommendations More than three fourths (82%) of the students included in the study reported experiencing corporal punishment. Furthermore, the result revealed association of corporal punishment and psychological distress in secondary schools. This emphasizes the need to inform government, caregivers and population at large on the adverse consequences of using corporal punishment at school and therefore advocate for current policy focus to shift from corporal punishment to positive punishment. In addition, there is a need for capacity building concerning psychological distress as the effect of corporal punishment in school support system (school counselor, social welfare officer and teachers) for early detection, minimal intervention and referral for those in need.