The International Journal of Indian Psychology ISSN 2348-5396 (e) | ISSN: 2349-3429 (p) Volume 3, Issue 4, No. 68, DIP: 18.01.213/20160304 ISBN: 978-1-365-39398-3 http://www.ijip.in | July-September, 2016 © 2016, K Anand, Y Nagle; licensee IJIP. This is an Open Access Research distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any Medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Perceived Stress as Predictor of Psychological Well-being among Indian Youth Kalpna Anand 1 *, Y K Nagle 2 ABSTRACT College is a time of varied experiences and expectations wherein students are striving to give a direction to their life and make a career for themselves. Unemployment, fierce competition and insecurity are some of the many problems that the youth of India faces everyday which culminate into stress and has the potential to affect psychological health. Thus, the present study seeks to explore perceived stress and psychological wellbeing among college students and their interrelationship. A total of 281 college students (Males=174, Females= 107) in the age range of 18-24 years, participated in the study. They were administered Perceived Stress Scale and Ryff’s Scale of Psychological Wellbeing. Results revealed that perceived stress had significant negative relation with all the six dimensions of psychological wellbeing. Perceived Stress accounted for a large variance in all the dimensions of psychological wellbeing. Perceived Stress came out to be one of the major contributors to psychological health and wellbeing. Keywords: Psychological Wellbeing, Perceived Stress, College Students, Gender Difference The National Youth Policy of India (2014) defines the youth population as those in the age group of 15-29 yr which comprises almost one third of the total population. Lazarus and Folkman (1984) defined stress as “involving a particular relationship between the person and the environment that is appraised by the person as taxing or exceeding his or her resources and endangering his or her well being” (p. 19). College students are a unique group of individuals who face specific intrapersonal, interpersonal, environmental, and academic stressors (Ross, Niebling, & Heckert, 1999). Many of these stressors may not necessarily be pertinent to other population groups (Ross, Niebling, & Heckert, 1999; Misra & McKean, 2000; Camatta & Nagoshi, 1995; Kadison & DiGeronimo, 2004). It is a critical phase of life and a period of major physical, physiological, psychological, and behavioural changes. Indian youth is currently facing a host of social problems like, unemployment, fierce competition, and rapid social change to 1 Scientist ‘D’, Institute of Aerospace Medicine, IAF, Bangalore, India 2 Scientist ‘F’ Defence Institute of Psychological Research, DRDO, Delhi, India *Responding Author