Psychosocial Stressors and Ratings in Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Disorders

The psychosical stressors experienced in the 6 months prior to the adminssion were studied on 114 child and adolescenet psychiatric inpatients in the psychiatric department of Ewha Womans University Hostpital from January 1985 to December 1989.

The severity of psychosocial stressors was rated by using the suggested ratings of DSM-III Axis IV criteria by Plapp et al and compared with DSM-III 7-point scale, RAU and OHIO scale. In the demographic data, boys were more common than girls. the age of 16 to 18 and the senior high school grade were most common. The diagnostic proportion was revealed in order of frequency as follow : schizopherenia, conduct disorder, somatofrom disorder, affective disorder, anxiety disorder, adjustment disorder and others.

The major distribution of psychosocial stressors with their frequency was family factors in schizophrenia, conduct disorder and others, physical illness or injury in somatoform disorder, interpersonal problems in affective disorder, and school performance in anxiety and adjustment disorder.

The mean ratings of severity of psychosocial stressors by diagnosis were higher than those of DSM-III 7-point scale and the highest in somatoform disorder.