Depressive symptoms in a community sample of UAE teenage girls

الملخص EN

A sample of female secondary school students in Al Ain City, United Arab Emirates, were screened using the Birleson Depression Self-Report Scale and a 5-item Dysfunction Related Scale to estimate the prevalence of significant symptoms of depression, and their personal and social concomitants.

Of 505 female students aged between 13 and 18 years, 79 (15.6%) scored above a cut-off point of 14 and reported depressive symptoms which were associated with significant personal dysfunction.

Overall 23% reported significant suicidal ideation.

Depression was significantly associated with mixed nationality marriage, but not with family income, life events or parental loss.

The results indicate that depression among teenage UAE females is not uncommon and that socio-envirdnmental factors are less relevant aetiological factors.

Young people under the age of 18 form the largest group of the population in the UAE according to the most recent official census statistics released to the press, but not yet officially published.

In an attempt to plan the development of psychiatric services for young people, including adolescents, we needed to establish the prevalence of a number of psychiatric conditions among this population.

Depression among young people had a very high priority.

Until now no definite study has been undertaken in the UAE or in the Arabian Gulf area.

Many studies in the same field have been performed in the western world and do indicate that feelings of misery, unhappiness and low mood are quite common amongst adolescents.

The question of how many would actually show a depressive syndrome has yielded highly variable rates.

The Isle of Wight study1 showed that among 14-15 year olds about 42% of boys and 48% of girls reported significant depressive feelings, while the prevalence of depressive disorder was about 2%.

A more recent UK based study of depressive symptoms among 140 secondary school students (male & female) aged 12-16 years reported that 5.8% had a clinical diagnosis of depression2.

Another UK community study of 1.072 adolescent girls (11-16 years) showed that the prevalence for current major depression (within one month) was 3.6% in previous years being 6.0 %.

For partial syndrome the corresponding rates were 8.9% and 20.7% respectively3.

The current study aimed at evaluating the prevalence of significant depressive symptomatology among a community sample of UAE teenage girls.

This, apart from its epidemiological value had the added interest of looking at depressive sympotomatology in an affluent cBmmunity which is often described as free of economically determined adverse social circumstances.