Personnalité et détresse psychologique, facteurs de risque de survenue de grossesse précoce en milieu scolaire : cas des élèves de l’enseignement secondaire d’Atakpamé

Abstract

School pregnancies are becoming recurrent in Togo. Plateaux region has the highest rate and the involvement of socio-anthropological factors in the occurrence of these early pregnancies has been widely demonstrated. But few studies focus on the psychological aspect. Therefore, this study aims to assess the link between the personality of pregnant adolescents in school and psychological distress in Togo. To do this, a survey was conducted among girls aged 14 to 19 enrolled in five secondary schools in Atakpamé with more cases of school pregnancies, present on the days of the survey and having consented to participate. 240 girls were surveyed. They were subjected to an interview based on psychological scales such as the Psychiatric Symptom Index (PSI) of Ilfeld (1976) and the 10-item Big Five Inventory (BFI-10-Fr). The results show a significant link between neuroticism and early pregnancy and also between early pregnancy and psychological distress. These results suggest that teenage girls with negative emotions are more likely to become pregnant early.