Common mental disorders among pregnant adolescents

Introduction: According to the World Health Organization (WHO) adolescence is the period between 10 and 19 years of age. Each year sixty in thousand girls become pregnant. Researches support that Brazil follows the trend of increasing the number of adolescent pregnancies; a worrying scenario in which the age of 10 to 14 years old presents the highest variation 7.1% per year. Aims: To assess prevalence of common mental disorders (CMD) which are depressive and neurotic symptoms and not classic psychiatric morbidity at all but manifestations of emotional pain and associations with socioeconomic, demographic factors and social support network in a population of pregnant adolescents.Methods: Cross-sectional study with 232 pregnant adolescents regularly attending two public maternity hospitals in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil from May to October, 2007. Self-reported questionnaires were used to assess socioeconomic and demographic data as well as information about social support network. GHQ-12 was used to assess common mental disorders. Results: The prevalence of CMD was 45.3%. Final adjusted model showed that CMD was associated with low income (PR= 2.32; CI 95% 1.15-4.67), lack of familiar support (PR = 2.18; CI 95%1.69 -2.81), do not have friends (PR=1.48; CI 95% 1.13 -1.92) and having no religion (PR = 1.72; CI 95% 1.25-2.36). Conclusion: The prevalence of CMD found in this study shows that adolescent pregnancy could be very harmful to the mental health of these young mothers; families and friends should have important rolls to help in these cases. Government policies should manage this important issue and professionals dealing with adolescents should be aware of these issues to identify risk situations that could be successfully managed. Brief questionnaires like GHQ-12 should be of great value as screening instruments for CMD in pregnant adolescents groups.