[An assessment of stress in adolescent inpatients]

Hospitalisation often remains stressful for adolescents. Therefore the improvement of life conditions and management of poorly adolescents during their hospital stay grows into an important concern in the medical staff. However, there is a lack of standardized instruments for an objective and reproducible assessment of problems related to this subject. The Hospital Stress Rating Scale (HSRS), validated in hospitalized adult patients, seems to be an interesting tool allowing an assessment of the level of stress and to specify the stressful factors.

During ten months, 107 adolescent inpatients, 39 males and 68 females, aged on average 13.5 +/-1.5 years, were included in the study. In addition to the HSRS, in a version adapted for adolescents, two other self-report questionnaires were used: the Toulouse Stress Rating Scale (TSRS), which is a rating scale validated to assess the level of stress and to identify the clinical manifestations of stress in adolescents, and the Toulouse Coping Rating Scale (TCRS), which is a rating scale validated to assess the coping style of adolescents in stressful situations. The sociodemographic and clinical characteristics of the studied subjects were collected by a standardized questionnaire.

A significant correlation was found between the HSRS mean total score and the TSRS mean total score. The HSRS item by item analysis showed that the nature of the stressors varied according to the clinical characteristics of the subjects. Lastly, the coping style was found having a significant influence on the level of stress reported by the subjects.

Even if they were obtained in a relatively small sample, these results show that the HSRS is a useful tool to assess the stress reported by the hospitalized adolescents. Such an instrument may be useful to plan aid and preventive strategies and to assess their impact in hospitalized adolescents.