• A cross-sectional study was conducted by AIIMS, New Delhi, among 491 adolescents aged 15-19 years in Ambedkar Nagar, an urban resettlement colony of South East Delhi, to assess the burden of common mental disorders (CMD).

• It used the Mini International Neuropsychiatry Review - Kid version 6 (MINI-Kid) based on DSM-IV TR and ICD-10 criteria to assess the presence of CMD.

• The main findings of the study are as follows:

1. The lifetime prevalence of CMD was 34% among the participants with 22.4% reporting depression and 6.7% reporting generalized anxiety disorder (GAD).

2. Being a girl [adjusted odds ratio (aOR): 2.1 (1.4-2.20)], suffering a stressful event in the past 6 months [aOR: 4.7 (3.1-7.3)] and smoking tobacco [aOR: 2.0  (1.2-7.4)] increased the odds of having a CMD.

• The authors stated that the burden of CMD was greater than that reported by the National Mental Health Survey 2015-2016 as it only evaluated a few adolescents and wasn’t even conducted in Delhi which might have led to an underestimation.

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