Amongst adolescents, depression is a common mental health problem. Adolescent depression is associated with distress, functional impairment and difficulties in relationships with peers and family members. Depressive symptoms, even if sub-threshold to meet diagnostic criteria for a depressive disorder, are also risk factors for these difficulties. Adolescents rarely consult for their psychological distress. Emergency departments, which are often used by adolescents in this context, constitute a privileged place to detect this suffering.

The objective of this study was to estimate the prevalence and correlates of psychological distress among adolescents seen in emergency department.

Our study was a transversal type, descriptive and analytic. It was conducted with 106 adolescents consulting in emergency department. All adolescents completed a sociodemographic data and the Adolescent Depression Rating Scale (ADRS), a screening questionnaire for depression.

The study included 106 adolescents. All of them consult for a somatic complain and none of them goes to the emergency department for a psychiatric reason. The mean age was 16.34 ± 2.54 (12→19 years). Sex ratio (♂/♀) = 0.89. The ADRS score was considered normal (score < 4) for 54.7% of the sample (n = 58) and 45.3% of adolescents (n = 48) had depressive symptoms (score ≥ 4). Depression was significantly correlated to bad school results (P = 10−3), tobacco use (P = 0.014), personal psychiatric history (P = 10−3) and family problems (P = 10−3).

Depressive symptoms are frequent among adolescents. Their consultations within emergency department provide a potential opportunity for their identification and for signposting to appropriate specialist services.

The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.