Detecting Adolescent Depression

(This was a research paper that I did last year during AP psychology class, but I tweaked a little for blogging purposes. It’s crucial that society takes mental illnesses seriously and face it without discrimination.)

On February 25, 2010, two teenage girls committed suicide by jumping in front of a high speed train in Norwood, PA. The people in the town were shocked, and even the mother of one of the girls was not aware that her daughter had the intention of committing suicide. One of the girls’ boyfriends had passed away several weeks before they had committed suicide. Parents and schools were not aware that the girls were at risk of depression and did not take any measures to prevent the disaster.

Adolescent depression is a mental disorder that occurs during the teenage years, and involves persistent sadness, discouragement, loss of self-worth, and loss of interest in usual activities. Depression is the most common mental health disorder in the United States among adolescents, and can have a serious impact on the lives of the adolescents who suffer from depression. According to a study, about 30 percent of adolescents of the US will experience adolescent depression before they reach adulthood. Teenagers can have depression regardless of their race, gender, social background, family income level, or school performance, though depression is more common in teenage girls than boys. Adolescents with depression are likely to have physical illnesses more often than other adolescents. Adolescents with untreated depression are more likely to engage in risky sexual behaviors, leading to higher rates of pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. Untreated depression is the number one cause of suicide, the third leading cause of death among teenagers. Suffering from depression can make a teenager as much as 12 times more likely to attempt suicide .

Adolescence is a unique period in the life cycle that brings with it special challenges and opportunities. Adolescents can make significant choices that may have far reaching effects that are carried forward into adulthood. Thus, fostering mental health among adolescents may also improve the health of adults.

Adolescents can hide their depression terribly well, and as a result sometimes even the people closest to a teenager suffering from depression may not be aware of it until it is too late. Depression is treatable, however treatment is futile if a person’s condition is never detected. As school psychologists are asked to help schools evaluate the risk of depression in students, they need to have a robust instrument to detect depression. The hypothesis of this study is that “the likelihood that a high school student is depressed is related to one or more factors such as his/her race, sex, age, sleeping habit, dietary habit, 4 physical activity, smoking, use of alcohol, use of drug, etc”. The objective of this study was to develop a predictive model to detect adolescent depression in the early stage. With the model, schools can collect survey data and score the students’ probability of depression. For students with higher probability of depression, appropriate measures can be taken at an early stage to prevent severe mental problems. The predictive model can be used to help foster mentally healthy adolescents.