Study on feelings of school avoidance, depression, and character tendencies among general junior high and high school students.

School refusal is a phenomenon that first drew attention in Japan around 1960 and it remains one of the major issues in child psychiatry today. Moreover, it is now said that there exists a large group of latent school refusers currently attending school but harboring feelings of school avoidance. To address this issue, a questionnaire survey was conducted on students enrolled in a junior high and high school affiliated with the Nagoya University School of Education. The questionnaire consisted of the Children's Depression Inventory (CDI), a scale for evaluating feelings of school avoidance (School Avoidance Scale), and a scale for assessment of personality characteristics associated with school refusal (School Refusal Personality Scale). The subjects were 425 first-year junior high to second-year high school students. Factor analysis of each scale revealed the CDI to consist of three factors: 'core depression', 'feelings of interpersonal maladaptation', and 'self-revulsion', and the School Avoidance Scale to consist of two factors: 'school dislike', and 'school avoidance'. The School Refusal Personality Scale consisted of three factors: 'obsessive-compulsive', 'passive/unsocial', and 'socially introverted'. Mean CDI score and standard deviation (SD) was 19.44 +/- 7.49, and that for 'feelings of school avoidance' was 20.18 +/- 5.61. The two subordinate factors of the School Avoidance Scale were intimately associated with both 'feelings of interpersonal maladaptation' and 'core depression' of the CDI, and negatively correlated with the 'obsessive-compulsive' factor of the School Refusal Personality Scale.