Early adolescence marks a critical period for the onset of psychiatric symptoms, with 50% of mental disorders emerging before age 18. Recent evidence points to individuals being born preterm and/or with low birth weight (henceforth, PTB) having an increased risk of developing mental disorders in adolescence. Surprisingly, existing early detection and intervention strategies in adolescence are not tailored to PTB needs and profiles. The previous use of several disorder- specific instruments complicates unified, efficient screening. Thus, here we characterised mental health profiles of 10–14-year-old PTB adolescents while testing the applicability of the widely used Diagnostic System for mental disorders for children and adolescents – III (DISYPS– III). We collected data on the frequency of experiencing mental health challenges from 225 young adolescents (M=12.03 years) from the longitudinal German Neonatal Network (GNN) who were born very preterm and/or light (M=28.03 weeks, M=999.62 g) using the DISYPS–III screening questionnaire. A confirmatory factor analysis replicated the DISYPS–III’ factorial structure and internal consistency for 10-14-year-old PTB adolescents. Overall, PTB adolescents reported significantly more mental health challenges than the DISYPS–III community norm sample. Results also replicated specific findings of mental health challenges from other PTB cohorts and countries, such as a higher number of comorbidities in adolescents diagnosed with ADD than ADHD. These findings of an elevated psychological burden suggest a need for structured PTB screening of long-term mental health outcomes in adolescence that include 10-year-old PTB individuals; with the DISYPS–III being a suitable screening instrument.