Open Journal of Medical Psychology, 2016, 5, 57-65 http://www.scirp.org/journal/ojmp ISSN Online: 2165-9389 ISSN Print: 2165-9370 DOI: 10.4236/ojmp.2016.54007 September 8, 2016 The Relationship of Psychosocial Dysfunction and Stunting of Adolescents in Suburban, Indonesia Dwi Oktari Erfanti, Djatnika Setiabudi, Kusnandi Rusmil Department of Child health, Faculty of Medicine, Universitas Padjadjaran-Hasan Sadikin Hospital, Bandung, Indonesia 1. Introduction Stunting in children has taken attention in the last few decades, because the incidence is still high especially in developing countries, and it affects 167 millions on 2010 [1]. For adolescents, in 2013 it represented 35.1% cases in Indonesia as one of developing coun- tries [2]. Globally, the reduction is still under the target of 2020 (142 million stunted children), even there is a reduction in the last two decades. While stunting becomes one of the major health problems in developing countries, this condition still has no focus Abstract The purpose of this study was to investigate the psychosocial dysfunction of adoles- cents with stunted and normal height. This was a cross-sectional study using pediatric symptom checklist-17 (PSC-17), subjected to adolescents (age: 11 to 14 years) in Suburban, West Java Indonesia. Two variables of the subjects’ characteristics (sex and body height) were included in the multivariate analysis because the p was <0.25 (p = 0.22, p = 0.07). It was found that 53 subjects had psychosocial dysfunction (25 stunted, 4 severely stunted, and 24 normal heights) with significant comparing pro- portion between severely stunted and normal height (p = 0.04). In severely stunted adolescents, the risk of psychosocial dysfunction is 6.33 more than in normal stature group. Examination was done on those 53 adolescents resulted in several psychoso- cial disorders: 12 psychosocially low self-esteem, 12 family problems, and others ranging from other several aspect problems. Forty-one from the 53 adolescents were with psychopathology symptoms. There was psychosocial dysfunction just in ado- lescents with severely stunted. Keywords Psychosocial Dysfunction, Stunted, PSC-17 How to cite this paper: Erfanti, D.O., Se- tiabudi, D. and Rusmil, K. (2016) The Rela- tionship of Psychosocial Dysfunction and Stunting of Adolescents in Suburban, Indo- nesia. Open Journal of Medical Psychology, 5, 57-65. http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/ojmp.2016.54007 Received: July 8, 2016 Accepted: September 5, 2016 Published: September 8, 2016 Copyright © 2016 by authors and Scientific Research Publishing Inc. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Open Access