Publication:

Psychiatric morbidity among school students

Background Psychiatric morbidity represents most important problem among all children including school going children worldwide, prevalence of psychiatric disorders among children has been reported to be 14-20% across various studies Child and adolescent population are susceptible for psychiatric morbidity; we plan to evaluate the prevalence of psychiatric morbidity among school going students of class 8 and 9.

Methods It was a cross sectional observational study. Study was conducted in two steps, firstly screening was done with GHQ-12 along with socio-demographic data sheets, on second step students scoring above GHQ cutoff score were interviewed by consultant psychiatrist and diagnosis was made as per ICD 10 DCR.

Results A total of 128 students, consisting of 73 male and 55 females (57% and 43% respectively) with mean age of 13.02±0.58 years participated. With GHQ screening 38 students scored above the cut-off marks and finally 6 children were diagnosed as generalized anxiety disorder, 6 as Depression, 1 as elimination disorder (nocturnal enuresis), 3 as separation anxiety, 4 cases of OCD, and 2 cases of Panic disorder totaling to 21 (16.41%) students.

Conclusions This study finds a prevalence of 16.41% of the psychiatric morbidity among school students.