Introduction:

The depression in teenagers is a current theme nowadays, although, there are few clinical studies focused on this population in Peru. In this work we made a descriptive analysis about the depressive symptomatology in adolescents from Arequipa City, according to certain family variables.

Method:

This is an associative study, which includes a sample of 1225 teenagers among 11 to 18 years old with an average age of 14, who came from public and private high schools around the city. Beck's Depression Inventory, Family Topics Questionnaire, and some questions about domestic violence and alcohol consumption, were applied to the teenagers.

Results:

We found an important percentage (41.4%) of teenagers who have some levels of depressive symptomatology according to psychometrical criteria, and some factor, such as parental conflict, alcohol consumption and violence from parents to children have significant differences, taking the depression levels as comparative criteria.

Conclusions:

We conclude that certain features of family disfunctionality like interparental conflict, the alcohol consumption by parents and the parental violence, are associated with depressive symptomatology in teenagers.

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