Depression Anxiety and Stress among Adolescents and efficacy of Preventive Intervention

Abstract

Depression, Anxiety and Stress (DAS) are three negative mental states and their newlineprevalence is an area of concern among early adolescents. Hence, the study had an newlineobjective of formulating, and analysing the effectiveness of a suitable preventive newlineintervention to alleviate DAS in early adolescents and was carried out in two phases. The newlinefirst phase was to identify the levels of DAS, their interrelationship, and their newlinedeterminants. A descriptive cross-sectional design was adopted with randomly selected newline1038 school-going adolescents aged 12-15 years. DASS-42 of Lovibond and Lovibond newlinewas used to assess the level of DAS and its association with the sociodemographic newlinedeterminants. A self-formulated rating scale to identify the potential determinants of DAS newlinewas used. The second phase adopted was before, after, and follow-up with a waitlistcontrol newlinegroup experimental design aiming to formulate and implement an appropriate newlinepreventive intervention to build a repertoire of coping skills to alleviate DAS. 60 children newlineeach constituted the experimental and wait-list control group. A customized preventive newlineintervention titled Comprehensive School-based Intervention Training to Alleviate newlineDepression, Anxiety and Stress (CSIT-DAS) was devised. The first phase of the study newlinealerts that out of 1038 school-going adolescents, anxiety tops the list with 91% of the newlineselected respondents being affected followed by depression (84.2%) and stress (75%) from newlinemild to extremely severe levels. The area of residence, and mother s education reported a newlinestatistically significant association (and#967;2 (2) = 9.651; p lt.01); (and#967;2 (2) = 14.992; p lt.01) with newlineanxiety and fathers education over stress (and#967;2 (2) = 11.748; p lt.05). In the second phase newlinethat examined the effectiveness of CSIT-DAS through a Two-way MANOVA of repeated newlinemeasures, a statistically significant effect with F (3, 57) = 9.246, p = .0001, and#951;2 = .327, newlineconfirms that the experimental and wait-list control groups differ in terms of intervention.