Psychosocial wellbeing of orphaned children in selected primary schools in Tanzania

Abstract

Psychosocial wellbeing is among the important components of the general wellbeing of an individual and crucial for children's survival and development. The current study aimed at investigating psychosocial wellbeing of orphaned children in selected primary schools in Tanzania. The study employed concurrent mixed methods design with 463 participants. 419 orphaned children obtained using simple random sampling filled in questionnaires. 12 head teachers, 12 guardian teachers and 20 orphaned children were purposively selected and involved in the in-depth semi-structured interviews. The Strength and Difficult Questionnaire (SDQ) was used to assess psychosocial wellbeing along with interviews. Descriptive statistics was used to analyse quantitative data while thematic analysis was used to analyse qualitative data. The total difficult scores of 30.8% (n ¼ 419) revealed that orphan children had emotional and behavioural problems which also connotes for the symptoms of mental health problems that tremendously affected their learning behaviours at school. Moreover, qualitative findings revealed that orphan children had feelings of unhappiness and discomforts which interfered with their academic activities. Based on the results, the study recommends an intervention study on promoting psychosocial awareness of orphan children in Tanzania primary schools and in-service trainings on guidance and counselling service provision among guardian teachers in government and privately owned primary schools in Tanzania.