Citation

Larsson B, Melin L, Breitholtz E, Andersson G. Acta Psychiatr. Scand. 1991; 83(5): 385-390.

Affiliation

Department of Child and Youth Psychiatry, Uppsala University Hospital, Sweden.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1991, John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

1853732

Abstract

The prevalence of depressive symptoms, suicidal ideation and their relationship to perceived health problems and social relations were examined in a sample of 605 Swedish adolescents aged 13-18 years. Short-term stability of depressive symptoms and the turnover rate from a nondepressed to a depressed state were examined for subsamples of 36 depressed and 71 nondepressed subjects, respectively, who were retested after 4 to 6 weeks. Using Beck's criteria for clinical depression, 9% of the adolescents experienced moderate to severe depressive symptom levels. However, a more conservative estimate, 4%, was obtained when DSM-III criteria for major depressive disorder were applied. Approximately 3% of the adolescents had pronounced suicidal ideation and had made at least one previous suicide attempt. There was a tendency for boys to show more stable depressive symptoms and suicidal ideation than girls. Furthermore, a set of 5 psychosocial variables concerning the students' satisfaction with their school and leisure time, conflictual level at home and number of close friends predicted 31% of the variance of the subjects' total depressive symptom scores. Although a 32% decrease of depressive symptoms was noted for the depressed subsample of adolescents, 44% of these subjects continued to experience moderate to severe depression at follow-up.

Language: en