Knowledge regarding school phobia among parents of children in selected wards of Nayarambalam Panchayat, Ernakulam, Kerala State, India.

TLDR: The parents knowledge regarding school phobia is only average and interventions need to be planned to enhance their knowledge so that they will be in a position to prevent the future occurances of schoolphobia and manage a child with school phobic with minimum complications.

Abstract: School phobia or school refusal is an emotional disorder of the children who are afraid to leave the parents, especially mother, and prefer to remain at home and refuse to go to school absolutely. The title of the study is “Knowledge regarding school phobia among parents of children in selected wards of NayarambalamPanchayat, Ernakulam.”Objectives: to- 1) assess the knowledge regarding school phobia among parents.2) find out the association between knowledge regarding school phobia among parents and selected demographic variables. 3)prepare an informationleaflet on school phobia in children and its management and prevention. Methodology- non-experimental descriptive researchdesign, among 80 parents of children between (4-10 years), using non-probability convenience sampling technique and the data was collected using structured knowledge questionnaire on school phobia. Results - Out of 80, majority of the subjects 45(56.3%) had average knowledge regarding school phobia. 33(41.3% ) of the subjects had good knowledge and 2(2.5%) of subjects had poor knowledge.The maximum score was 26. The mean score of overall knowledge on school phobia among parents was 16.39 and standard deviation was 3.563. There was no significant statistical association between parents knowledge on school phobia and selected demographic variables.Conclusion- The parents knowledge regarding school phobia is only average. Therefore interventions need to be planned to enhance their knowledge so that they will be in a position to prevent the future occurances of school phobia and manage a child with school phobia with minimum complications.