US Teenagers More Depressed Now Than In Previous Years?

Depression is suggested to affect more teenagers across the US according to researchers. A team of researchers looked into the data gathered from the government's National Surveys on Drug Use and Health, in which the drug use and mental health of teens aged 12 to 17 were surveyed.

The questions were focused about symptoms that teens may have experienced in the past year which may signal the individual to experience a major depression. It was then found that the national percentage of adolescents who had major depressive episodes was 11 percent from 2103 to 2014. This showed an increase compared to 9.9 percent in 2012 to 2013, SAMHSA reported.

Professor of Psychiatry, Myrna Weissman, at Columbia University in New York said that it is still unclear if findings would mean that depression rates will continue increase. She suggested that to figure that out, researchers need to look at trends over a longer period of time.

However, the findings are in line with what experts would expect prior the study, that depression is very common among adolescents, Live Science reported. An assistant professor of clinical Neurobiology in Psychiatry, Ardesheer Talati, at Columbia University and New York State Psychiatric Institute, also agreed that one year is not long enough to determine if the percentage of teens with depression is truly increasing.

There are three other factors that may affect the percentage rate of depression among adolescents according to Talati. First is the increased awareness of mental illness that may cause teens to seek medical evaluation for depression. Or, in other cases of younger adolescents, parents may pick up on changes in their kids' behaviors so they bring them to the doctor.

Depression may also increase in teenagers today as there is more pressure on them than there was in the past. Stressors such as social, family and academic may also increase depression. Lastly, the way that depression is diagnosed has become broad and has changed over time. This may mean that more people will be diagnosed than before.