The prevalence of depression among high school and preuniversity adolescents: Rasht, northern Iran.

BACKGROUND Depression is an important mental health problem, which is quite unknown among adolescents in our community. We conducted this study to determine the prevalence of depression among high school and preuniversity students of Rasht, northern Iran. METHODS We studied 4,020 randomly-selected individuals out of 41,815 high school and preuniversity students. Beck's self-administered standard questionnaire and a predetermined form containing some demographic variables were applied to measure variables. RESULTS Two hundred ninety-nine subjects (due to incomplete responses) and 40 subjects (evening-school students) were excluded from our study. One thousand two hundred fifty (34%: CI 95% 32.4 - 35.4%) out of 3,681 subjects suffered from depression. There were significant differences between the prevalence of depression and type of school (P < 0.001), educational field (P < 0.0005), socioeconomic class (P = 0.0002), and gender (P < 0.001). There was no significant difference between the prevalence of depression and city district, school grade, and age of participants. CONCLUSION Our study indicates that depressive symptoms are common in our subjects and they have significant association with low socioeconomic status. We, therefore, recommend the use of psychiatric interview and analytical methods for determination of the prevalence of depressive disorders and its relationship with studied variables.