Prevalence Of Psychosocial Problems In Adolescents

Abstract

Background: Psychosocial problems refer to the difficulties faced by adolescents in different areas of personal and social functioning. Adolescents are vulnerable to psychosocial problems because of physical and physiological changes that occur in their body during this developmental stage. Therefore, the aim of this study was to study the prevalence of psychosocial problems among adolescents. Methods: A community based descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted among a sample of students aged 10–19 years attending intermediate and secondary schools in Saudi Arabia. The survey was conducted and face to face interview was taken among 330 adolescents out of which 214 (64.84%) were male and 116 (35.16%) were female. Pediatric Symptom Checklist Youth version (PSC-Y) was used as a tool to study the psychosocial problem. Results: In present study, overall prevalence of psychosocial problem was found to be 33.03%. Prevalence of psychosocial problem in male and female was 34.11% and 31.03% respectively. Psychosocial problems were more in age group of 14-16 years (39.69%) followed by 10-13 years 34 (31.48%) and 17-19 years age group 23 (25.27%). Conclusions: On basis of findings using PSC-Y, it is concluded that, a sizeable population (about one third of the adolescents) were suffered from psychosocial problem and the attention problem was most commonly found using PSC-Y subscales.