What Determine the Depression Among Orphan Adolescents? An Empirical Assessment

Authors:

Dr. R. Dayanandan

Pages: 8-17

Abstract:

Orphan adolescents are a special group of people who are generally deprived and prone to develop psychiatric disorder even if reared in a well-run institution. Depression can negatively influence health and life such as lack of productivity, relationship trouble and Suicide, Alcoholism or Drug Dependency. The focus of this paper is assessing the prevalence of depression and its associated factors among Orphan adolescents in Hawassa city. A cross-sectional design was used and a total of 277 orphans were selected from nine orphanages using proportional random sampling technique to collect the information. The collected data was entered into the EPI-INFO 7.0 software, and exported to SPSS version 20 for statistical analysis. The strength of association between variables was assessed using a crude and adjusted odds ratio by running logistic regression with 95% confidence interval. The results indicate that the overall prevalence of depression among the orphan adolescents was found to be 28.5%; the majority (54.3%) of them were within the age group of 15-19 years and this group diagnosed with chronic physical disease. Poor social support, having a chronic disease, the orphans' age group, and the length of stay in orphanages were the factors associated with depression. The outcome of the depression for the last one year are suicide attempt (3.9%), unsafe sexual practices (15.7%), decreased their school attendance and performance (31.4%), felt failure (24.1%), and 38.2% lost their appetite. About 92.4% of the respondents had no history of substance use within the center, 62.5% did not feel discrimination from their friends and society. However, 54.9% faced physical abuse from their families. Out of sample nine orphan centers under study, only two of them had a psychiatric clinic and a depression prevention activity practice. It needs integrated work to solve the problem, the orphanages must collaborate with other organizations to provide proper psychiatric services to diagnose and treat depressed orphans.