THE IMPACT OF FAMILY INSTABILITY ON ADOLESCENTS’ WELL-BEING: IMPLICATIONS FOR HEALTH EDUCATION

Abstract

The family is an important component of the society. It is the first agent of socialisation of the child. The family provides a feeling of security, love, comfort, and happiness to its members. It is quite unfortunate that most families are witnessing instability as a result of unresolved marital conflicts and challenges which bring about divorce. When this occurs, the children especially the adolescents ones are worse-hit. They may experience short term negative impacts like anger, shame, and depression to emotional imbalance, psychological disorders as well as mental health challenges have disastrous effects on the adolescent as presented in this work. Heath Education can help to resolve the above negative impacts on adolescents by promoting family life and marital education, provisions of adequate health information to adolescents, collaboration with places of worship for moral education as well as rendering counselling services to distressed adolescents for the development of problem solving and coping skills for crisis management and conflicts resolutions both at school and home. Recommendations towards the effective management of these problems both at the school, family and community levels were made.