Original papers The presence of depressive symptoms in adolescents is the last school year

Introduction: adolescence is a period of great change, with depressive symptoms being common at this stage of development. There has been an increase in the number of adolescents with depressive symptoms in recent years. One of the instruments used in the detection of depressive symptoms is the Beck Depression Inventory. Material and methods: observational study, based on self-application of the 2nd version of the Beck Depression Inventory to students of the 12th year of schooling in the academic year 2010/2011. Results: our survey was administered to 117 students. Adolescents had a mean age of 16.9 years. After the global assessment, we verified that 9.4% of adolescents had some degree of depressive symptoms and 6 of these had severe depressive symptoms. Females were more prevalent in the group of adolescents with overall scores above 13. The average rates of depression were higher in females (9.03 vs. 4.1). The analysis of depressive symptoms alone showed that a decreased ability to work is the most frequent depressive symptom (36%). Five teenagers responded affirmatively to the question “I’d like to kill me.” Conclusion: the mean total scores obtained are slightly lower than those found in other studies, but the percentage of students with severe depressive symptoms is identical to other series (5%). As described in the literature females are the most affected.