CELEBRITY WORSHIP AND ITS ASSOCIATION WITH SUBJECTIVE MENTAL HEALTH OF ADOLESCENT UNDERGRADUATES IN NIGERIAN TERTIARY INSTITUTIONS
Keywords:
celebrity, celebrity worship attitude, subjective mental health, adolescents, NigeriaAbstract
This study investigated celebrity worship attitude and its relationship with subjective mental health among 1577 adolescents (16-19 years of age) from three tertiary institutions in Nigeria. The study used cross-sectional survey and correlational designs. The 34-item celebrity worship attitude scale and adolescents’ mental health continuum short-form were hand distributed for data collection. Data analysis was done with IBM-SPSS software using descriptive and inferential statistics. Four null hypotheses were tested at p < 0.05. The findings showed that 63.4% of the respondents were celebrity worshippers. The favorite celebrities were mostly (54.6%) in the music industry. The prevalence of poor mental health was 72.5%.  Celebrity worship for the purpose of entertainment-social, was found a positive predictor of social wellbeing; intense-personal positively predicted emotional, psychological and overall mental wellbeing while borderline-pathological negatively predicted social, psychological and overall mental health. Significant gender difference was observed in social wellbeing. Celebrity worship attitude and languishing mental health is highly prevalent among the respondents. However, only borderline-pathological level of celebrity worship attitude appears to be negatively associated with mental health of young people. Celebrity worshippers had significantly poorer social wellbeing but better psychological wellbeing than the non-worshippers. The paper discusses the implications and directions for future research.ÂReferences
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