Stressful Life Events and Risk of Illness among Urban Adolescents in Bangladesh

Introduction: Adolescence describes the year between 13 and 19 and can be considered the transitional stage from childhood to adulthood.The purpose of the study is to investigate the relationship between stressful life events and risk of illness during the period of adolescence.Methods: The study was carried out in two high schools namely Civil Aviation High School and Hossain Ali High School, Tejgaon, Dhaka.Dhaka is the most important capital city in Bangladesh.The duration of the study was 1 year, from 1 st January to 31 st December 2017.Results: Data on lifetime stress about common life events i.e., Romantic breakup (27.3%), family disruption (22.8%),Change in acceptance by peers (25.5%),Failure in grade in school (22.4%),Not making extracurricular activity (25.3%),Outstanding personal achievement (20.3%) were collected from 384 school-going adolescents.The association between each source of stressful life events and risk of illness was modeled in separate statistical analyses.The proportion of adolescents reporting about senior in college (29.9%),Breaking up with boy/girlfriends (27.3%),Changing in acceptance by friends (25.5%) change in parent's financial status (25%), Failure in grading in school (22.4%) were statically significant.There was a positive relationship between the age of adolescents and getting the risk of illness (df, r, p) and negative relation with a monthly income of the family and getting the risk of illness (df, r, p).About half of the respondents were suffering from a slight risk of illness whether a small portion of respondents was in at risk of illness.The risk of illness is mildly associated with age, sex, monthly income of a family, and profession of the mother.Conclusion: Some stressful life events were strongly associated with the risk of illness.Any other occurrences of associated with stressful life events should be addressed properly to reduce the risk of illness.