The Relationship of Psychosocial Dysfunction and Stunting of Adolescents in Suburban, Indonesia

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the psychosocial dysfunction of adolescents with stunted and normal height. This was a cross-sectional study using pediatric symptom checklist-17 (PSC-17), subjected to adolescents (age: 11 to 14 years) in Suburban, West Java Indonesia. Two variables of the subjects’ characteristics (sex and body height) were included in the multivariate analysis because the p was <0.25 (p = 0.22, p = 0.07). It was found that 53 subjects had psychosocial dysfunction (25 stunted, 4 severely stunted, and 24 normal heights) with significant comparing proportion between severely stunted and normal height (p = 0.04). In severely stunted adolescents, the risk of psychosocial dysfunction is 6.33 more than in normal stature group. Examination was done on those 53 adolescents resulted in several psychosocial disorders: 12 psychosocially low self-esteem, 12 family problems, and others ranging from other several aspect problems. Forty-one from the 53 adolescents were with psychopathology symptoms. There was psychosocial dysfunction just in adolescents with severely stunted.