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A seven-year longitudinal study of adolescent depression in the United States and Canada is nearly halfway complete, and the findings thus far are not exactly cheerful.
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| Benjamin Hankin |
"One in five adolescents is clinically depressed by age 18, and those individuals are two- to seven-times more likely to have an episode of depression in adulthood," said Benjamin Hankin, an assistant professor of psychology at USC who is collaborating on the study with colleagues at McGill University.
The study, one of the largest of its kind in North America in duration and detail, began three years ago with 100 adolescents 11-14 years of age in Chicago and 275 of similar age in Montreal. The participants reflect a full range of racial groups and socio-economic status.
Funded by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, USC's Research Consortium on Children and Families, and the National Institute for Mental Health, the study requires adolescent participants and their mothers to complete questionnaires every three months. Researchers follow up with lengthy telephone interviews. The surveys measure participants' emotions, life events, and symptoms of depression and anxiety.
"One of the big things we want to understand are the individual vulnerabilities these participants have and how those vulnerabilities come into play with stressors in their lives," Hankin said. "Everyone experiences stress, but it's the underlying vulnerabilities that can set the stage for adolescent depression.
"If we can identify the specific vulnerabilities that lead to depression, we can then show who is most at risk in the general population for becoming clinically depressed."
Researchers in the study have learned that girls, in particular, are becoming depressed during adolescence because they tend to ruminate about themselves and their depression. Also, adolescents who have negative and critical interactions with their mothers are much more vulnerable to developing depression and pessimistic outlooks on the world and themselves. Adolescents don't necessarily grow out of those attitudes and the accompanying bouts of depression, Hankin said.
Thirty-eight percent of the mothers of the study's participants have had episodes of depression as adults.
"Depression can be a recurrent, chronic condition," Hankin said. "We've seen a six-fold increase in rates of depression among adolescents, and we're hoping this study will shed more light on why depression is affecting so many. We hope that information from this study can inform intervention and prevention efforts to reduce depression among youth."
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