The Prevalence of Depression Among High School and Preuniversity Adolescents: Rasht, Northern Iran

 

Mohammad-Jafar Modabber-Nia MD^•*, Hossein Shodjai-Tehrani PhD*,

Seyed-Roknoddin Moosavi MD*, Nakisa Jahanbakhsh-Asli MD*, Mahnaz Fallahi MSc*

Background: Depression is an important mental health problem, which is quite unknown among adolescents in our community. We conducted this study to determine the prevalence of depression among high school and preuniversity students of Rasht, northern Iran.

Methods: We studied 4,020 randomly-selected individuals out of 41,815 high school and preuniversity students. Beck’s self-administered standard questionnaire and a predetermined form containing some demographic variables were applied to measure variables.

Results: Two hundred ninety-nine subjects (due to incomplete responses) and 40 subjects (evening-school students) were excluded from our study. One thousand two hundred fifty (34%: CI95% 32.4 – 35.4%) out of 3,681 subjects suffered from depression. There were significant differences between the prevalence of depression and type of school (P < 0.001), educational field (P < 0.0005), socioeconomic class (P = 0.0002), and gender (P < 0.001).  There was no significant difference between the prevalence of depression and city district, school grade, and age of participants.

Conclusion: Our study indicates that depressive symptoms are common in our subjects and they have significant association with low socioeconomic status. We, therefore, recommend the use of psychiatric interview and analytical methods for determination of the prevalence of depressive disorders and its relationship with studied variables.

 

Archives of Iranian Medicine, Volume 10, Number 2, 2007: 141 – 146.

Keywords: Adolescent · depression · epidemiology · high school students

 

Introduction

 

ccording to World Health Organization (WHO), depressive disorders are the fourth leading health problem in the world. Major depressive disorder is estimated be the second disabling disease of mankind in 2020.^{1, 2}

Some studies reported that most of the young adults born after World War II, suffered from depressive disorders. Meanwhile, there were more committed suicides among 12- to 19-year-old American adolescents, which have attracted more attention.³

A Chinese-American study on 503 subjects, using the Chinese version of Beck’s questionnaire and a cut-off point of 16, revealed that 15% of participants had depression.⁴

Another study reported the prevalence of depression among high school students as follows: mild depression in 18%, moderate depression in 9%, and severe depression in 7%, hence, a total rate of 34%.⁵

Four studies, which were using Beck’s depression questionnaire, reported moderate depression in 8% to 36%,⁶ another survey, using a summarized self-administered Beck’s questionnaire, reported severe depression in 18% of 8,206 adolescents.⁷ Although the rate of depression seems to be higher in those with low socioeconomic status, there is no strong evidence to support this hypothesis.⁸

One study has reported a significant association between the prevalence of depression and low socioeconomic class.⁹ The prevalence of depression among female adolescents has been reported to be from two¹⁰ to five times more than males.¹¹ Another survey, which compared the prevalence of depression in early and late adolescence showed a higher rate in late adolescence.³ We conducted this study to determine the prevalence of depression among high school and preuniversity students of Rasht, Guilan Province, northern Iran.

 

Patients and Methods

 

Subjects

We examined  high school and preuniversity students in Rasht, North of Iran from October 2002 through September 2003. There were 62 girls and 52 boys high schools and preuniversity schools in educational district one of this city. It included 12,553 high school and 8,740 preuniversity students. The corresponding figures for the second district were 67 and 56 high schools and preuniversity schools, with 10,678 and 9,843 students, respectively. There were a total of 41,815 students studying in 237 high schools and preuniversity schools.

Based on the previous studies, we assumed a prevalence of 5%. With a precision of 1% and 95% confidence interval (CI), taking into account the multistage clustering sampling method, we calculated the minimum sample size, and finally selected 4,020 students for our study. Assuming 40 students in each cluster, we selected 100 clusters that were proportionately distributed among educational districts. At first, the list of students was obtained from the Education and Training Office of Guilan Province. The number of students was added up accumulatively. Selecting the location of the first cluster was based on a random number table. Then, using a systematic sampling technique, knowing the intercluster interval,  we selected the subsequent clusters. Forty students from evening-schools were excluded because they were older than our subjects. Totally, our sample included 2,172 girls and 1,848 boys.

 

Definition

·         Depression: Considering a cut-off point of 16 in Beck’s questionnaire.

·         Education level: As recorded in class inventory.

·         Educational field: As recorded for class field.

·         School type: As recorded in school sign.

·         Districts: There were two educational districts in Rasht City.

·         Age: As reported by students.

·         Social class: As calculated by adding up result of scores obtained from parent’s occupational status, parent’s educational level, and family incomes.^{12, 13}

 

Data collection tools and assessment

After attending a short training and explanatory course about the proposed subjects, and coordina­ting with school deans, trained clinical psycho­logists referred to the predetermined schools and explained the needs for the participants (students), obtained informed consents, and recorded each student’s demographic data including age, gender, socioeconomic class, grade and educational field, as well as type of school (i.e., private or state).

To reduce falsepositive responses, the assessment of depression was performed using Beck’s questionnaire that was adapted for local use. Beck’s standardized questionnaire scores defined as follows: symptom-free (0 – 15), mild depression
(16 – 30), moderate depression (31 – 46), and severe depression (47 – 63).¹⁴

Each of the students completed Beck’s questionnaire in 15 minutes, and if needed, the correspon­dent attendant gave appropriate answers. If by any way the student was in a holiday, psychologists would have returned to carry the study on another day.

 

Data processing and statistical analysis

Data were transferred to a personal computer, classified, and analyzed with SPSS (Windows version 10). χ² test was used to compare the categoric variables.

 

Results

Study population

Two hundred ninety-nine subjects due to in- complete responses and also 40 subjects (evening school students) totally (8.5%) were excluded from our study, while 3,681 subjects were included.

Table 1 shows the baseline information on our studied sample. It shows educational districts, type of school, educational fields, and level according to the studied variables.

 

 

Table 2 shows the relative frequency of depression in different groups. Most of the depressed cases were females (38.9%), in grade 3 (36.2%), had a low socioeconomic (40.9%) status, and were around 19 years of age (39.6%).

 

 

 

There were significant differences between the prevalence of depression and type of school
(P < 0.001), educational field (P < 0.0005), socio­econo­mic status (P = 0.0002), and gender
(P < 0.001).

Table 3 shows the relative frequency of depression stratified by the severity and other studied variables; 10.3% of subjects had severe depression.

 

 

Discussion

 

Depression is a worldwide public health problem. We found that 34% of subjects were depressed, which is in keeping with another study that has shown that more than 34% of subjects had depression.⁵ Our results, however, were different from an American study, which was  performed  on 13,558 young adults, using CES-D questionnaire, which reported that 28.7% of subjects had symptoms of depression.¹⁵ Our findings were also different from Yeung et al’s study.⁴ The disagreement may be contributed  to using  different tools for measurement of depression, different sample size, motivation of  subjects to response, and subject’s lifestyle.

Our study showed mild depression in 28%, moderate in 5.7%, and severe in 0.3% of students, which is different from Hughes’⁵ and Kandel and Davies’ studies.⁷ Considering the similarity of the age and gender in the above-mentioned studies and ours, it seems that cultural differences regarding areas such as psychosocial stress and different using of concepts such as self evaluation, social self-confidence, and adaptive behavioral styles, explain the differences.

Higher rate of mild depression and lower prevalence of severe depression observed in our study indicates that our subjects are more exposed to environmental stress¹⁶ which is a deserving point for public health authorities.

According to our findings, 25% of male and 39% of female students had depressive symptoms, which is similar to Dahlmann’s study¹⁷ that showed depression symptoms in 16% of males and 26% of females aged 12 – 17 years. Our findings are also similar to those of Cooper and Goodyear¹⁸ who showed a prevalence of 20.7% depression symptoms in girls, and also the results of Scheidt et al¹⁹ who reported a rate of 34% and 49% depression symptoms in males and females, respectively, those of Bowrs’ study,²⁰ Graham and Verhulst’s study,¹⁰ and Angold and Rutter’s²¹ study that have shown male/female ratio of 1:2. Our results, nonetheless, were different from that of Kashani and McNaul⁶ who reported a male/female ratio of 1:5. It seems that differences in questionnaire, methodology, and sample size are the reasons of afore-mentioned differences.

We found a significant correlation between low social class and depression symptoms. Similar results were obtained by Blazer.⁹ However, it is different from  reports of Poznanski and Mokros⁸ and Rushton et al.¹⁶ Using different kinds of socio-economic classification methods, and short- comings of social and familial support systems in our subjects maybe the reasons for above-mentioned differences.

Our study showed more depressive symptoms in 19-year-old students; however, no statistically significant association was observed between age and rate of depression. This supports the Pataki’s hypothesis.³

Our study indicates that depressive symptoms are common in our subjects and it seems that they have significant association with low socioeconomic status.

Study limitations were as follows:

·   Research methodology (cross-sectional); that only indicates point affective situation rather than its trend in past and future; and also cannot establish an association between background factors and studied variables.

·   Due to transitional probability character of depression symptoms in different people, it is difficult to generalize our finding to extended period than adolescence.

·   Despite Beck’s questionnaire validity, it seems that it is affected by the motivation of response in subjects.

·   Nonrespondent characteristics, excluded from the study, may affect the results.

We, therefore, recommend that psychiatric interview and analytical methods be used for the determination of prevalence of depressive disorder and its relationship with other variables.

 

Acknowledgment 

 

We would like to thank all the staff of Guilan University of Medical Sciences, the Vice-Chancellor for Health, and the school students for their active participation in this study. Part of this project was funded by a grant from the Vice-Chancellor for Research, Guilan Education and Training Organization.

 

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