For writing assignment one, I reviewed a study on the affects of major depression in adolescence and how it makes an individual more susceptible to another episode later in adulthood. I also found two other articles that discussed major depression and then more specifically, depression in children and adolescents. Ideally for this review, I wanted to find a similar study. But after hours online and in the library flipping through psychology journals I turned up, what seemed to be empty handed.
After finding several websites that posted the press release I chose, I stumbled across NAMI, a mental health website. Not only did it tell me that it's mental illness awareness week, it also led me to a great article on Major Depression. 9.9 million adults suffer each year from major depression. That's 5% of the population. Twice as many women suffer from depression than men and major depression can occur in all ages. (www.nami.org, 2003) And finally what grabbed my attention the most was the just about three-fourths of the people who experience a major depression in their lives will have at least one other episode. (www.nami.org, 2003).
I continued my search trying to find articles that would link major depression in adolescence to a reoccurrence in adulthood. Then I came across the National Institute of Mental Health web site and it's there that I found an article entitled "Depression in Children and Adolescents". This article was basically a fact sheet for physicians and reviewed a lot of studies done on all kinds of depression but I did find some interesting stuff. 2.5 percent of children and as much as 8.3 percent of adolescents in the U.S. suffer from depression. 4.9 percent of 9-17 year olds have major depression. It also indicated that the onset of depression in occurring in younger people much more than had in the past, and cited a recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (which I had looked up but could not find this particular study), that found that the early onset of major depression often persists, reoccurs, and continues into adulthood.
