Depression Among Adolescents in Senior High Schools in the Ga West Municipality of the Greater Accra Region, Ghana

Abstract

Adolescent depression is known to have links with the development of depression in later life. The main aim of the study was to assess the prevalence of depression among adolescents and to contribute to knowledge on depression and give context specific information for Ghanaian children. The study used a cross sectional study design with an adopted CESD questionnaire to elicit responses from study participants. A school based survey was conducted using a simple random sampling technique. The data was analyzed using bivariate and multivariate analysis after data was entered through MS Excel 2013 and transferred to Stata 14.0 for the analysis. Results revealed that depressive symptoms were higher among female adolescents (67.31%) compared to male adolescents (53.68%). Sex was significantly associated with depression at p-value 0.003 (X2=8.61). Depressive symptoms were found to be higher in adolescents who had siblings above four (68.13%) as compared to those who had less than four siblings (57.09%). Those who had parental care some or little of the time were more likely to report depressive symptoms as compared to those who have parental care all the time (AOR:1.27, 95%CI: 0.67-2.38). There was a highly likelihood of depressive symptoms among adolescent who rarely or none of the time felt valued (AOR: 10.10, 95%CI: 3.10-32.37). There was also a significant association between those who felt like harming themselves and depressive symptoms. Adolescents who rarely or none of the time felt like harming themselves were 0.20 (80%) less likely to be report depressive symptoms than those who felt like harming themselves all the time (AOR:0.20, 95%CI:0.48-0.80). Abuse was also observed to be significantly associated with depressive symptoms and those who rarely or none of the time were abused were 80% less likely to have depressive symptoms (AOR: 0.20, 95%CI: 0.16-1.47).