Prevalence of depression among school going adolescents in an urban area of Haryana, India

Background: Depression in adolescents often results in suicide, school drop-out, pregnancy, antisocial behavior, substance abuse, progressing in to adult depression functional disability and significant impairment. Depression in adolescents is an under recognized mental health problem. Methods: Cross-sectional study by using simple screening instrument Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) among school-going adolescents in urban Rohtak (Haryana). All the students of class 9 th & 10 th of 3 government schools were included. The data was collected on a predesigned, pre-tested, semi-structured, schedule by interview technique after obtaining informed consent from the concerned adolescents/principals of schools. Statistical analysis has been done with simple proportions and percentages using SPSS20. Results: A total of 374 adolescents participated in the study. More than half of study subjects were found to have scores corresponding to some degree of depression and nearly one in seven was suffering from moderate to severe depression. Conclusions: This study emphasizes the need for screening for depressive symptomatology and identifying adolescents who need further intervention.