Abstract

Adolescence is transition from dependence to independent relationships. Life skills are the positive behavior and ability to adjust efficiently with the needs and challenges of everyday life. Life skills education program have a significant effect on positive mental health and self-esteem of vulnerable adolescents. Life Skills education, according to WHO (1999), “is aimed at facilitating the development of psycho-social skills that are required to deal with the demands and challenges of everyday life”. Gould and Carson (2008a) defined sport-based life skills as “those internal personal assets, characteristics and skills such as goal setting, emotional control, self-esteem, and hard work ethic that can be facilitated or developed in sport and are transferred for use in non-sport settings” In recent years, there is a trend in the psychological literature that focus on bad efficiency and disruption has changed to focus on positive mental health and well-being. Well-being is a dynamic concept that includes subjective, social, and psychological dimensions as well as health-related behaviors. Current social indicators can capture phenomena such as crime, divorce, environmental problems, infant mortality, gender equality, etc. which are proven to be affecting psychological well-being of students. The present study was to ascertain the interactive effect of life skills education program and psychological well-being on decision making among standard eighth students. For this purpose, an intervention program based on life skills education of about 29 hours 30 mins was developed for students spreading over eight weeks. The aim of the research was to ascertain whether life skills education facilitates the decision making of students, and if so, for which level of psychological well-being of students. The participants of the study included 55 and 48 students in the experimental and control groups respectively. The decision making was significantly affected by the life skills education program whereas psychological well-being had no effect on the decision making of students. Keywords: Life skills, Life skills education program, Psychological well-being, Decision making.