Abstract: A total of 307 Malaysian children and their parents were surveyed to ascertain the prevalence of mental health problems amongst urban primary and secondary school children. The results indicated that secondary school children report slightly higher rates of depressive symptoms, whereas primary school children report higher rates of social problems. There was also a discrepancy between child and parents reports of children’s emotions and behaviours. Children’s self-reports of aggressive behaviours where higher than their parents’ reports. Alternatively, parents reported lower levels of their childrens’ emotional problems, as compared with the childrens’ self-report. When gender was taken into consideration, females were reported to be more aggressive, withdrawn, and have more attention problems when compared with males.
A total of 200 university students were surveyed to ascertain if gender, personality traits and social support were associated with self-esteem. There were equal numbers of males and females in the study, with controls for living and education status. The results showed that gender was not significantly associated with self-esteem. Whilst all the personality and social support factors were found to be associated with levels of self-esteem, only extraversion, openness to new experiences, conscientiousness, emotional stability and total amount of social support were found to predict self-esteem. Recommendations are made for early identification and interventions for populations at risk of low self-esteem based on the findings of the study.