Prevalence of depressive disorders and low academic achievement in junior high school students

Affective disorders, especially major depressive disorder (MDD) and dysthym ia (DD), are two of the most frequent illnesses among teenagers; around 8 % of the epidemiological population, suffers from these illnesses. A great p revalence variability, probably related with cultural and social characteri stics; the secular increase of the diseases; the source of information and the way to evaluate the depressive symptomalogy have been reported. These d isorders not only affect the health of suffering them, but they also interf ere in their academic pertormance. We applied a semistructured interview to 40 teenagers from a private junior high school from Mexico City. We found a 12 % and 7.5 % prevalence of MDD and DD, respectively. The adolescents wi th internal disorders presented lower notes in Spanish 6.3 (2.2) vs 8.0 (1. 7) it = 2.34, gl = 28, P = 0.024]; and English 6.6 (1.6) vs 8.0 =(1.6) it = 2.23, gl = 38, P = 0.032] than adolescents with external disorders and wit hout disorders. It is necessary to consider the psychopathologic problems, particularly depressive disorders, in the evaluation of low academic achiev ement.