Depressive symptoms in adolescents in situation of social vulnerability

Abstract Objective To identify the main indicators of depression in a sample of adolescents living under social vulnerability conditions and associate it with sociodemographic and behavioral variables. Method: The sample was composed 135 adolescents in social vulnerability in Florianopolis, Santa Catarina state, Brazil. Indicators of depression were investigated by the Children's Depression Inventory (CDI). The Mann-Whitney test was used for comparison between genders, whereas factor analysis with varimax normalized orthogonal rotation was used to identify grouping factors between depressive symptoms. In addition, Poisson regression was used to identify the prevalence ratios, with the top third of CDI score as the outcome variable. Results: The indicators “weight loss or gain,” “low self-esteem”, and “fatigue” had greater explanatory power among the CDI scores. Males reached a higher average score (24.9 points) compared with females (23.6 points). The CDI scores were high regardless of sociodemographic and behavioral issues such as ethnicity and time in front of the television, computer, or video game. Conclusion: A high prevalence of depressive symptoms was observed in adolescents in situations of social vulnerability, and males are 2.24 times more likely to achieve high scores on the CDI compared with females.