@article{ref1,
title="Relationship between salivary cortisol and depression in adolescent survivors of a major natural disaster",
journal="Journal of physiological sciences",
year="2014",
author="Yonekura, Takashi and Takeda, Kazunori and Shetty, Vivek and Yamaguchi, Masaki",
volume="64",
number="4",
pages="261-267",
abstract="The purpose of this study was to determine the utility of salivary cortisol levels for screening mental states such as depression in adolescents following a natural disaster. We examined the relationship of salivary cortisol levels in adolescent survivors of the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake with the depression subscale of the 28-item General Health Questionnaire (GHQ). Subjects were 63 adolescent survivors (age = 14.29 years ± 0.51) who were administered the GHQ and provided saliva samples thrice daily (morning, afternoon and evening) over the course of 3 days. Based on the GHQ-depression subscores, subjects were divided into low and high depression groups. About 22 % of the subjects were classified into the high symptom group. When data collected over 3 days were used, a significant difference was observed between the two groups in the salivary cortisol levels at the evening time point as well the ratio of the morning/evening levels (p < 0.05). Analyzed by means of receiver-operating characteristic curves, the morning/evening ratios showed a good power in discriminating between subjects with and without depressive symptoms. Our study suggests that repeated measurement of salivary cortisol levels over 3 days has utility in screening for depressive states in adolescents following a natural disaster.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="1880-6546",
doi="10.1007/s12576-014-0315-x",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12576-014-0315-x"
}