Prevalence of Depression and Anxiety among 10th Standard Exam Going Children in Rural Area of Kancheepuram District

Abstract

Depression is a common illness worldwide, with an estimate of about 350 million as on 2016. Anxiety is a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease about something with an uncertain outcome. The annual years of healthy life lost per 100,000 people from anxiety disorders in India has increased by 7.2% since 1990, an average of 0.3% a year. The purpose of this study is to know whether the students are depressed and anxious during exam times and if so, in what grade of depression and anxiety the majority of students comes under .And with the results, to make general awareness and pacify the school student regarding their exams. Materials and Methods:  A cross sectional study will be conducted among the school students studying 9^th and 10^th standard in the field practice areas of the Department of Community Medicine Pondicherry institute of Medical Sciences, Duration of the study is one month (February 2017). Considering the prevalence of Anxiety and Depression as 25%, with 20% absolute precision the sample size calculated was 312. Results: Most of the 9^th and 10^th standard students are having mild depression, ie 119 students (n) which constitutes about 38.1%. Also on comparing 9^th and 10^th standard students, 9th standard students are having minimal depression ie 65 students which constitutes about 60.2 %, whereas 10^th standard students are having mild depression ie 70 students which constitutes about 51.8%.. Providing counselling for students, the teacher of a class should know the different difficulties of each student of their class and try to solve them in a smooth manner by doing these activities we can reduce the percentage of depression and anxiety among school children’s for an extent.