A STUDY OF BIRTH ORDER, PERSONALITY & MENTAL HEALTH

Abstract

Context: Ordinal position the child holds within the sibling ranking of a family is related to
intellectual functioning, personality, behavior, and development of psychopathology. This study
aimed to investigate birth order effect on personality & mental health. Material and Methods:
Study conducted on (n=40) participants of either sex (group I, n=20) was normal and another
(group II, n=20) psychiatric .They were held from Pt. Deendayal upadhyay joint hospital, district
Moradabad, U.P, India.GHQ-12 negative participants from the community formed the normal
group age ranging between young adulthood (20-30) years. Sentence Completion Test (SCT)
administered on all the participants included in the study. Results: Analysis of the data indicated
‘oldest’ & ‘only’ born psychiatric group very low ‘social’, ‘ambitious’ and ‘confident’ in their
personality traits and ‘oldest’ male had high psychiatric morbidity then female. Difference is
statistically significant at (p<0.001).