Somatic complaints and their relationship with depressive symptoms among adolescent girls: a descriptive study.

Abstract

Background: Physical symptoms of unknown etiology are common in children and adolescents. Adolescents suffer from depression in a similar way to adults. Objectives: Main objectives were to assess the somatic complaints and depressive symptoms of adolescent girls and to identify relationship between these variables. Other objectives were to find out the association between somatic complaints and selected socio personal variables and to find the association between depressive symptoms and selected socio personal variables. Methods: descriptive survey design. The sample size was 250 adolescent girls. The tools used for the data collection included a questionnaire to collect socio personal data and child adapted version Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-15) for assessing somatic complaints and Kutcher Adolescent Depression Scale (KADS) for assessing the depressive symptoms. The study was conducted among students of selected government schools of Kozhikode, district of Kerala. Results: The results showed that about 1.6% had high level of somatic complaints, 4% had medium and 40.4% had low somatic complaints. Important findings includes 15.2% of participants were having depressive symptoms. The study also found a positive correlation between somatic complaints and depressive symptoms. Conclusion: Screening for somatic complaints among adolescent girls help in the early identification of depression in adolescent girls.

Keywords

• somatic complaints; depressive symptoms; adolescent girls