Borderline mental disorders in schoolchildren

Abstract

To study the frequency of borderline mental disorders in children of secondary general education schools. We examined 1013 male and female schoolchildren, aged 12-14 and 15-17 years. In the first stage, the they completed a screening questionnaire to estimate the presence of a range of psychosomatic syndromes. An analysis of medical history and clinical examination were performed as well. The second stage included medical examination using DAWBA for the children with total scores on The Strengths and Difficulty questionnaire ≥ 16; with the score ≥ 6 on the emotional scale and with the score ≤ 5 on the social scale. Generalized anxiety and depression were recorded more often in girls than in boys. Every 4-th adolescent (26.1%), regardless of gender, had problems in communication with peers. At the same time, boys showed conduct disturbances more often (p = 0.005) than girls (23.3% and 16.3%, respectively). Depression syndrome was 6.1 times more frequent in adolescents of the older group as compared with younger children (p = 0.024). Depression was associated with chronic headache (68.6% of children, mostly in girls and in the older group), abdominal pain (37.3%, mostly in girls) and back pain (39.2%).