Symptoms of Affective Register as an Onset of Mental Disorders in Adolescents

Abstract

Background: mental disorders of different origin often begin with affective symptoms. The inuence of adolescence is recognized and concerns psychopathological manifestations following diagnostics difculties. The aim of the study was to investigate the structure of mental disorders with symptoms of affective disorder in adolescents rstly admitted for psychiatric advice. Patients and method: the study involved 120 adolescents (aged 17.1 ± 2.37) who became patients of the psychoneurological dispensary for the rst time in 2020–2021 due to affective register symptoms. The clinical, psychopathological and statistical methods were used in the study. Results: all respondents had initial symptoms before seeking psychiatric help, the average age of occurrence of which was 14.5 ± 33.18 years. Among the initial manifestations, a decrease in mood, irritability, and emotional lability predominated. Symptoms detected at the initial stage, persisted until the moment of seeking psychiatric help, and were the cause of the violation of social adaptation: a decrease in academic performance in 52 cases (42.28%), school absences in 44 patients (35.77%), narrowing of the range of interests in 17 (13.82%) and conicts in 11 (8.94%) cases. At the same time, psychopathological symptoms noticed by the adolescents themselves and their parents were not a reason to seek help and, in most cases, were considered as manifestations of the puberty crisis. At the rst request of teenagers for psychiatric help, mood disorders (F30–F39) — 48,5%, neurotic, stress-related and somatoform disorders (F40–F49) — 25% dominated in the structure of diagnoses, according to ICD-10. Conclusions: mental disorders, including affective pathology, debuting in adolescence, can have a prodromal period and be often misinterpreted as a puberty crisis. The symptoms of affective disorder in adolescence differ in polymorphism and can lead to a variety of diagnoses. Underestimation of initial preclinical manifestations of affective pathology, despite signicant difculties in social adaptation, can result in untimely therapeutic intervention, severe clinical manifestations and conversion of the diseases into a chronic course. The obtained data conrm the need for a thorough differential diagnosis of initial manifestations of mental disorders, subsequent clinical and follow up care and proper treatment.