Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
ARTICLEPsychiatric Symptoms and Their Relationship to Suicidal Ideation in a High-Risk Adolescent Community Sample
Section snippets
Sample
One hundred ten adolescents enrolled in one of three public high schools in Virginia were asked to participate in the study on a voluntary basis. Adolescents were selected on the basis of referrals obtained from school psychologists, guidance counselors, and special education teachers. These school personnel were asked to identify adolescents who exhibited any type of emotional disturbance in the school setting. Of those referred, 13 parents refused to allow their child to participate, 5
Psychiatric Diagnoses
Seventy-four percent of the adolescents received a diagnosis as assessed by the K-SADS-E, yielding a total of 121 diagnoses. The frequencies and percentages of adolescents with current Axis I diagnoses are given in Table 1. In interpreting these results, it is important to note that the prevalence of specific disorders included adolescents who had more than one disorder.
Demographic Differences
No significant differences across age, grade, or race were found in level of suicidal ideation as measured by the MSSI.
DISCUSSION
Seventy-four percent of adolescents included in this high-risk high school sample received a psychiatric diagnosis. The most prevalent diagnosis was MDD, with approximately 40% of adolescents meeting diagnostic criteria. These prevalence estimates are higher than those reported by Lewinsohn et al. (1993), who found that only 10% of adolescents in a randomly selected high school sample had a psychiatric diagnosis. Furthermore, approximately 56% of adolescents included in this study reported
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This study was sponsored by a small institutional grant from Virginia Tech.