Association between depressive symptoms and subsequent injuries in early adolescents: a population-based study.

OBJECTIVES

Depressive symptoms (DSs) may be frequent and highly increase the risk of injuries in early adolescents (10-16 years). This study assessed the association between DSs and subsequent school and out-of-school injuries in early adolescents.

METHODS

The study population included 1219 middle-school adolescents from north-eastern France (mean age =12.7 ± 1.3) who completed at the end of school-year a questionnaire gathering socioeconomic features (nationality, family structure, parents' occupation, parents' education, and family income), obesity, alcohol use, tobacco use, health status, DSs (Kandel scale higher than the median value, hence including moderate levels), and school and out-of-school injuries during the present school-year. Were only considered the DSs and confounders that had started before the school-year. Data was analyzed using multinomial logistic regression models.

RESULTS

DSs were strongly associated with one or more school-physical/sports-training injuries (sex-age-adjusted odds ratio ORsa 2.08,  < 0.001), other-school-training injuries (ORsa 2.13,  < 0.01), school-free-time injuries (ORsa 2.84,  < 0.001), out-of-school-sports injuries (ORsa 1.95,  < 0.001), and traffic injuries (ORsa 3.78,  < 0.001). The risk was higher for having two or more injury categories (ORsa 4.03,  < 0.001) than for only one injury category (ORsa 1.80,  < 0.001). These results were robust and remained after further adjustment for socioeconomic features, obesity, alcohol use, tobacco use, and health status.

CONCLUSIONS

DSs strongly increase the injury risk in early adolescents. Injury prevention should include DSs screening and monitoring and help adolescents and their neighborhood be aware of the risk.HighlightsInjuries and depressive symptoms (DSs) are frequent in early adolescents.DSs highly predict subsequent school and out-of-school injuries and cumulating several injury types.These results are robust after adjustment for socioeconomic features, being obese, alcohol use, tobacco use and poor health status.Injury prevention should include early DSs screening and monitoring and help adolescents and their neighborhood be aware of the risk.