Psychosocial stressors, coping styles and depression among senior secondary school students in Kampala District

Abstract

Depression in adolescents is on the rise with high morbidity and mortality rates. Secondary school students face many psychosocial stressors which may originate from home, school and the wider society. They may cope with these stressors maladaptively or adaptively. In Uganda, the interaction between psychosocial stressors and coping styles in the development of depression among senior secondary school students has not been fully researched. The main objective was to establish the prevalence of depression and investigate the relationship between psychosocial stressors, coping style and depression among adolescents in secondary schools in Kampala district. A sample of 254 respondents were obtained using stratified random sampling technique was used to select the participants for the study. At the first strata, four schools were selected randomly from a list of public secondary schools in Kampala district. Selection at the second strata involved two classes per secondary school randomly selected from the secondary schools already sampled. At the third strata, students were selected randomly from the classes already sampled by use of a class register. The number of students selected was proportionate to the population of students in each class. Questionnaires were group administered for each school and were collected on completion of the exercise. Analysis was performed using Pearson’s correlation coefficient (r), chi-square, ANOVA. The prevalence rate of depression was 20.9% on the Child Depression Inventory for both males and females. There was no gender difference associated with depression across the sample. There was no statistically significant relationship between coping style and depression; however, there was a statistically significant relationship between psychosocial stressors and depression. There was a trend moderation effect observed. High perceive stress being significantly related to low control coping and low perceived stress being significantly related to high control coping.