Prevalence of Depression and Its’ Risk Factors among Higher Secondary School Students

As adolescence is a transitional stage in which a person's physical and psychological development and transformation are limited to the time between puberty and legal adulthood. It is commonly associated with the onset of a variety of mental health or adjustment problems. This study was to find out the incidence of depression and the factors that contribute to it among higher secondary school students. A descriptive, cross-sectional study was conducted among 100 adolescents who were selected by simple random sampling technique. The socio-demographic information, Perceived Social Support scale and Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) were adopted to collect the data. Descriptive and Inferential statistics was used to analyse the collected data. In this study, 52% of the adolescents did not have depression, whereas 18% had moderate, 8% had moderate to severe depression and 2% of them had severe depression. Nearly 68% of students had a higher social support perception. The type of family and living status of parents had significant relationship with the level of depression among adolescents at p = 0.01. The study concludes that depression and mental distress among these adolescents may be alleviated by boosting their perceived degree of social support and self-esteem through a variety of methods such as family support, counselling at schools and workshops on self – management skills etc.