Adolescence is the period when most of the psychological problems begins to set in.In this study, a single-informant type of Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) with an impact supplement was used as a screening tool to identify the prevalence of overall psychiatric disorders and substance use among adolescents in a school from rural area of Pathanamthitta District of Kerala.The Multi-informant Type of SDQ identified individuals with a psychiatric diagnosis with a specificity of 94.6% and a sensitivity of 63.3%, while single informant type has substantially poorer sensitivity and specificity.Method:this was a cross sectional study in which 245 plus two students aged between 15-18 years, from a rural area of Kerala were assessed using the single informant type of Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire and prevalence of substance abuse was also assessed.Results: 5.31% adolescents were found to have abnormal total difficulties score and 9.39% had borderline problems.A total of 14.7% were suffering from some abnormalities.Hyperactivity was most prevalent 10.2 % among the studied sample, 6.1% had serious emotional problems, 7.3% subjects had abnormal conduct disorders and peer relationship problems in abnormal range were exhibited by only 3.7%.In case of prosocial behaviour, about 4.9% were in abnormal range.Hyperactivity had significant correlation at 0.01 level with emotional 0.261 and conduct problems 0.206 and emotional problems had significant correlation at 0.05 level with peer relationship problems 0.128.There was significant conduct problems in males compared to females p=0.028.The prevalence of substance use among the studied sample was, alcohol=2.4%;cigarettes=0.8%;pan masala=0.8%and others including ganja, hashish etc.=0.4%.However we could not establish any significant relationship between substance use and childhood psychiatric abnormalities.
O et al. (2015) studied this question.