The COVID-19 preventive safety measures imposed nationally resulted in psychological distress in all populations. Many researches detect that it was the adolescents who showed more signs of distress than any other age group. At the same time, all the adolescents were not affected, that those with higher self-efficacy were able to cope with crisis. So, the focus of the research is to identify the relationship between self-efficacy and its predictive role on adolescents' psychological distress during the pandemic. The participants of the research were six hundred students of 10^th and 12^th grades in urban islands schools in Kochi city, Kerala, India. Depression Anxiety Stress Scale (DASS-21) and General Self-efficacy Scale (GSES) were used to measure variables, and the correlation research design was applied in the study. The research findings exposed a negative correlation between self-efficacy and psychological distress, and regression analysis identified the predictive role of self-efficacy on adolescents' psychological distress.

Keywords: Adolescents, COVID-19, Psychological distress, Self-efficacy