USE OF A SYMPTOM SCALE TO STUDY THE PREVALENCE OF A DEPRESSIVE SYNDROME IN YOUNG ADOLESCENTS

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Abstract
The entire student enrollment (n = 624) in a public junior high school in Raleigh, North Carolina were visited in their homes between October 1978 and February 1979. Eleven (2.9%) of 384 students completing the Center for Epidemiologic Studies self-report depression scale reported symptom patterns consistent with the Research Diagnostic Criteria for major depressive disorder. These 11 subjects were concentrated in the top l2% of the distribution of symptom scores and had symptom prevalences exceeding those in the overall study population by a factor of three or more. Black males trom low income households predominated. A self-report questionnaire may be usable to detect a depressive “syndrome” in young adolescents. The prevalence of such a syndrome is similar to prevalence estimates for adults and young adolescents, but considerably lower than estimates derived from total scale scores and cutoff points. A syndrome-oriented analytic approach for symptom scales should be explored as an alternative to the use of cutoff scores for epidemiologic studies of psychiatric disorders.

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