Risk Factors Of Adolescent Depression

Depression has been one of the major mental health issues for adolescents. Depression causes adolescents to feel sad and lose interest in activities they were once interested in. Adolescents experience many changes during their adolescence years. Due to their changes, adolescents experience several emotional changes. According to Mayo Clinic (2017), some issues that causes adolescents’ constant emotional changes are puberty, academic expectations, and changes of their bodies. Adolescent depression can be temporary or permanent depending on how severe the depression is and depending on how the treatments are improving the adolescents. Several studies have found that detecting depressive symptoms in adolescents earlier can help the adolescents

There are few common risk factors of adolescent depression. Parental separation, sexual abuse, experience of shame, gender, relationship with peers have been known as the common risk factors for adolescent depression. Aslund, Nilsson, Starrin and Sjoberg (2007) argues that psychosocial factor, such as parental separation, sexual abuse, shaming experiences, and unemployments of the parents can be the risk factors for adolescent depression. For this study, 5,048 adolescent from Sweden were surveyed about depression, separation of parents, sexual abuse, unemployment of parents, and their shaming experiences. The results of the survey found that these psychosocial factors were affecting adolescent depression. Out of all the psychosocial factors mentioned above, the most highest depression rate was found in the experience of shame. The depression rate was twice as higher in girls than in boys. In conclusion, the study have found that parental separation, sexual abuse, shaming experience and unemployments of the parents were the risk factors of adolescent

The study was conducted by surveying 2,199 adolescents from the data of National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. The adolescents were asked to do a Depression Screener and also were asked questions that consisted to spot the depression signal. The results were that female adolescents tends to usually have higher depression rate than male adolescents. According to the study, girls are more likely to have higher depression rates because their puberty usually occurs earlier than male adolescent (Moreh and O’Lawrence, 2016) “Depressive disorders are more than twice as common in girls as in boys possibly because of differences in coping styles during puberty” (Bhatia & Bhatia, 2007). Puberty usually causes adolescents to enter depression because of the changes they have to adapt to, which usually gives them stress. Throughout the article, it talks about how understanding the signs, symptoms and common risk factors of depression would be able to assist the parents to find the best care for their adolescents (Moreh and O’Lawrence, 2016). Parent should always be aware of the signs and symptoms of their adolescents. Therefore, parents should have a close relationship with their adolescents, in order to recognize the symptoms and signs. Failing to detect the symptoms and signs of your adolescent may lead them into a major