The Profile and Comorbidities of Mental Disorders among Children and Adolescents in Bushehr Province

Although the population growth in Bushehr Province is high, only few studies have been conducted on the prevalence of mental disorders among children and adolescents. This article aims to investigate the prevalence of psychiatric disorders among children and adolescents in Bushehr province that has second population growth in Iran.

This was a cross-sectional study in which the eligible subjects were 6-18 years old children and adolescents selected using the stratified random cluster sampling from rural and urban areas of Bushehr. The Persian Version of K-SADS-PL was used by trained clinical psychologists to diagnose mental and psychiatric disorders.

A total of 1037 cases consented and completed the survey. They were categorized into 3 age groups; 6 to 9, 10 to 14 and 15 to 18 years old containing 34, 33.7 and 32.3% of all. Up to 11.6% of cases including 10.2% of boys and 12.9% of girls were detected to have any kind of diagnoses through interviews with children and their parents using K-SADS-PL questionnaire. These 120 patients embraced 11.6, 9.2 and 14% of each age group, respectively. Among 120 cases with psychiatric diagnoses, anxiety disorders as a whole were the most frequent psychopathology, affecting up to 5.4% of total population.

About 1 out of 10 children and adolescents in Bushehr has any kind of psychiatric disorders. The prevalence of mental disorders was higher in girls and in adolescents.