Abstract:

Background: Depression is the second leading cause of disability in the world. As unrecognized as depression is among the adult population, it is even more so among children and adolescents of which most of them are in secondary schools. It is noted that, on any single day, about 2% of school-aged children and about 8% of adolescents meet the criteria for major depression sadly, there are no data of the prevalence of this problem in Mwanza city.

Objectives: The study was aiming at determining the prevalence of depression among high school students in Mwanza city.

Methodology: This was a cross sectional descriptive study which involved 10 randomly selected advanced secondary school students from day and boarding schools both single sex and mixed school in Mwanza city where a total of 225 students aged 16 years and above filled the study designed questionnaire for socio-demographic data and Beck Depression for depression screening. Data collection were analyzed by using SPSS. The results are presented in items of tables and narratives.

Results: There were 81 males (32.1%) and 173 females (67.8%) with age range of 16-25. Off 255 students screened with BDI, 83 (32.5%) had symptoms of depression with the clear predominance of prevalence of depression in girls 32.9% than in boys 30.9%. The most significant social demographic factors were gender, combination of study, type of school, financial support and being loss of parents.

Conclusion and recommendation: There is high prevalence of depression among secondary school students in Mwanza city, hence the need of the government to have routine program of screening and managing depression in secondary school students so as to improve the performance.