School, behaviour and health-related difficulties in early adolescents with contraceptive consultation: a population-based study in eastern France.

Abstract

Early adolescence (10-16 years) is a crucial period for physical, mental and cognitive development where a wide range of school, behaviour and health-related difficulties may occur. These issues may be aggravated in adolescents with early affective/sexual live and contraceptive consultation. This study assessed the risk of school, behaviour and health-related problems among younger boys and girls having a contraceptive consultation. Such knowledge would inform care providers about their main role in monitoring and caring adolescent problems. This cross-sectional study included 1559 middle-school adolescents from north- eastern France (mean age 13.5+1.3). They completed a questionnaire gathering socioeconomic features, obesity, school difficulties, substances use, physical health, psychological health, social relationship, violence, sexual abuse, and suicide behaviours. Data were analysed for each gender separately using logistic regression models. The contraceptive consultation concerned 6.7% of girls and 3.2% of boys (P=0.002). Based on odds ratio (adjusted for age, school-class level and socioeconomic factors), both boys and girls with contraceptive consultation had 2-to-7-time higher risk of consumption of alcohol, tobacco, cannabis and other drogues, poor physical health, relational problems, and perpetrated violence. Additionally, the girls had a 4-time higher risk of low academic-performance and being obese while the boys had 6-to-37-time higher risk of sexual abuse, school dropout ideation, suicide ideation and suicide attempts. Although based on self-reported data, we found that primary care providers play a prominent role in detecting and monitoring school, behaviour and health-related problems during adolescent contraceptive consultations.