Adolecsent Depression
The suicide rate for adolescents has increased more than 200% over the last decade. Recent studies have shown that greater than 20% of adolescents in the general population have emotional problems and one-third of adolescents attending psychiatric clinics suffer from depression. The majority of teenage depressions can be managed successfully by the primary care physician with the support of the family, says Maurice Blackman MB, FRCPC.
Depression has been considered to be the major psychiatric disease of the 20th century, affecting approximately eight million people in North America. Adults with psychiatric illness are 20 times more likely to die from accidents or suicide than adults without psychiatric disorder.[1] Major depression, including bipolar affective disorder, often appears for the first time during the teenage years, and early recognition of these conditions will have profound effects on later morbidity and mortality.
Is depression in adolescents a significant problem?
The suicide rate for adolescents has increased more than 200% over the last decade.[2] Adolescent suicide is now responsible for more deaths in youths aged 15 to 19 than cardiovascular disease or cancer. Recent studies have shown that greater than 20% of adolescents in the general population have emotional problems and one-third of adolescents attending psychiatric clinics suffer from depression.[3] Despite this, depression in this age group is greatly underdiagnosed, leading to serious difficulties in school, work and personal adjustment which often continue into adulthood.
Why is depression in this age group often missed?
Adolescence is a time of emotional turmoil, mood lability, gloomy introspection, great drama and heightened sensitivity. It is a time of rebellion and behavioral experimentation. The physician's challenge is to identify depressive symptomatology which may be superimposed on the backdrop of a more transient, but expected, developmental storm.
Diagnosis, therefore, must rely not only on a formal clinical interview but on information provided by collaterals, including parents, teachers and community advisors. The patient's premorbid personality must be taken into account, as well as any obvious or subtle stress or trauma that may have preceded the clinical state. The therapeutic alliance is very important since the ad...
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... should the patient be referred to a psychiatrist specializing in adolescents?
Referral should be considered under a number of circumstances. If the physician cannot engage in conversation with the
teenager because of the patient's resistance or the physician's own insecurity about dealing with this age group, then referral is
suggested. This is particularly important if the depression is judged to be severe or if there have been some suicidal concerns.
Referral should also be considered if the patient's condition does not improve in the expected time or if there is any deterioration
or worsening of the depression despite adequate treatment. It should be stressed that the majority of teenage depressions can
be managed successfully by the primary care physician with the support of the family.
Works Cited:
1. Murphy, JM, Monson, RR, Olivier, DC, et al: Affective disorders and mortality: A general population study. Arch Gen Psychiatry 44:470, 1987. 2.
Hodgma, CH, McAnarny, ER: Adolescent depression and suicide: Rising problems. Hosp Pract 127(4):73,1992. 3.
Kovaks, M: Affective disorders in children and adolescents. Am J Psychol 44(2):209,1989
Have you ever felt “down in the dumps”? How about sad or unhappy for long periods of time? Has the thought of suicide ever crossed your mind? Between 35% and 50% of adolescents experience depression at some point in their teenage years. Brent Runyon, author of The Burn Journals, experienced a severe type of depression while in middle school.
It is unknown to many that mental health issues can be “caused by biology, environment, or a mix of both,” and that, “ at least one in ten—as many as six million young people—may have a ‘serious emotional disturbance’” (Source C). There is very little education for the general public, especially for young people, which leads to inaccurate self diagnosis. Even until recently, it was a common belief that children and adolescents could not suffer from major depression, but experts have proved that depression disorders and other mood disorders can affect any one of any age, and now, especially, it is “being recognized more and more in young people” (Source C). Once again, this augmentation of cases being seen and treated among adolescents is disquieting, and it should be encouraging people to try to solve and help those who suffer from mental
The Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II) is the latest version of one of the most extensively used assessments of depression that utilizes a self-report method to measure depression severity in individuals aged thirteen and older (Beck, Steer & Brown, 1996). The BDI-II proves to be an effective measure of depression as evidenced by its prevalent use in both clinical and counseling settings, as well as its use in studies of psychotherapy and antidepressant treatment (Beck, Steer & Brown, 1996). Even though the BDI-II is meant to be administered individually, the test administration time is only 5 to 10 minutes and Beck, Steer & Brown (1996) remark that the interpretive guidelines presented in the test manual are straightforward, making the 21 item Likert-type measure an enticing option to measure depression in appropriate educational settings. However it is important to remember that even though the BDI-II may be easy to administer and interpret, doing so should be left to highly trained individuals who plan to use the results in correlation with other assessments and client specific data when diagnosing a client with depression. An additional consideration is the response bias that can occur in any self-report instrument; Beck, Steer & Brown (1996, pg. 1) posit that clinicians are often “faced with clients who alter their presentation to forward a personal agenda that may not be shared.” This serves as an additional reminder that self-report assessments should not be the only assessment used in the diagnoses process.
Approximately 24% of 12-17 year olds have considered suicide and up to 10% have attempted suicide.” (Suicide Intervention Training PG 3). Teens today are very likely to commit suicide for various reasons. In today’s society there are a lot of judging and bullying cases around the world. No matter how much we promote a bully free zone there will always be a couple of cliques, or individuals, who want to bring others down and who do not know the seriousness of bullying. Although bullying is a big cause of suicide, the leading cause is a mental illness that many people are familiar with called depression. “Psychiatric disorders can affect diverse aspects of an individual’s life.”( Dispelling Myth Surrounding Teen Suicide, PG 1). If you or someone you know seems down most of the time, the best thing to do is to go see someone about your despair. If you are diagnosed with depression, prescribed depression medicine can help and can be one way to prevent suicidal thoughts or actions. “There is a lot of evidence that suicide is preventable.”(Cont. Principles of Suicide Prevention, PG
That stomach churning feeling of guilt for many seems to appear as a small price to pay when completing an act of academic dishonesty. Colleen Wenke wrote an essay on cheating eighteen years ago called “Too Much Pressure”. In the past fifty years, the number of students who admit to cheating has increased fifty to seventy percent(Gaffe). Many people wonder what leads the students to make this unjust decision. Today, the reason for a rise in cheaters is because of how easy it has become, leading many students to the false conclusion that they aren’t breaking any rules; It is simply viewed as a shortcut to success in the classroom and beyond.
So, to help students across the country cheat better, saving themselves both from easy detection and from incurring the wrath of insulted faculty, and leading to a much more harmonious school environment, I offer the following tips, based on recent experience:
Students today cheat for a number of different reasons. First among these is the fact that it is easy to do. Not only does the technology available today make cheating easier than ever, but since cheating is so prevalent it is possible to find likeminded co-conspirators quite easily as well as non-cheaters who are willing to keep silent. “In McCabe, Trevino, & Butterfield's (1999) qualitative research, a number of students expressed considerable concern about peer reporting decisions and a reluctance to report others, especially friends” (McCabe & Trevino, 2001).
Students show bad academic integrity by cheating. but cheating has a wide range of examples. Most people think of cheating to be copying someone’s work, or using a study guide on a test, but it can mean much more than that. Students now have
Cheating is a past time made present into adulthood by today’s students. As you may remember in your youthful days in middle school. Some of us may have attempted once or twice to cheat to get ourselves ahead in class. There were those who wrote the answers on their sneakers, or wore a calculator watch. However, today’s cheating is much more complicated. These are adults who obviously don’t trust themselves to complete their own assignments and prefer to pay a dignitary to complete their work for them, with technology and advancements, students have advanced their
There are two perspectives: a general definition and a psychological one. Most general population see cheating as plagiarism, cheating on tests, exchanging work with other students, have someone else write their essays or copy and paste from the Internet. This definition is important to emphasize now because it is not presented as a serious matter to students in grade schools (K-12); when students are caught, these situations often have simple solution such as redoing an assignment or retaking an exam with reduction in points. However, in colleges, cheating is not taken lightly on exams and research papers because everything “borrowed” from the internet need to be credited for regardless what excuses are made, assignments are done professionally and correct scientific findings are crucial to future researches. On the other hand, the American Psychological Association defines academic cheating to be a plaque, a personality disorder by manipulation and callousness (Novotney), or “a framework for ethical decision making…such as [cultural] honor code, religious doctrines or social norms.” (Shu & Gino, 2012). Students who cheat often rationalize its definition so that they still remain as good individuals to their peers, their teachers and themselves. Based on the statistics found on Open Education Database website, the Ad Council and the Educational Testing Service (in United States) discovered that between 75% and 98% of college
Academic knowledge is the basis on which future prosperity, and financial security has been determined. As a consequence, students feel inclined to perform above average in school. Now, as students perform less and less, they sink to obtain good grades by cheating. This method to acquire the desired grades will only harm the student, instead of the imagined result. Prompted by a child’s inability to perform basic tasks throughout his education , academic cheating spawns numerous negative consequences.
Why People Cheat- An hypothetical review of students having belief in cheating and other un-authorized means to achieve better grades and vice versa
Modern students face many pressures for academic success. They are often unwilling to disappoint their parents or spouses. Some fear that not cheating will weaken a student’s ability to compete with their peers. They rationalize their unethical behavior, unwilling to accept a poor grade, consequently justifying cheating as the only means to that end.
By knowing the causes and what attributes to academic dishonesty, we are more aware of what to be cautious of while taking a test, doing projects, writing essays and the many more assignments students have. Cheating overall, takes away the benefits of gaining a deeper understanding of lessons and shows the lack of moral fortitude.If we work hand in hand and understand the values that are within an academic career we can reach success as a society. Taking a societal approach and working to prevent cheating by presenting the cons that come from cheating may open the eyes of many students to change their ways. Although, cheating makes the pressure of earning an A less of a burden, imagine actually earning that A with gratitude and full understanding. That’s the beauty of
There are some materials in class that the students just can not comprehend, so what do they resort to? Cheating off of the kid sitting next to them, Googling all of the answers, or having someone else do that work for them which causes that child to not learn any of the material given to them. Seval Eminoglu Kucktepe did a study at Marmara University in Istanbul, Turkey. Out of 26 students that were surveyed, 26% of them marked that they had no idea about the answer to the question that was presented to them. (104) Another way of looking at it is the student isn’t intentionally cheating, they haven’t had a clue that what they were doing is considered cheating. Some students don’t know the institutions policies about the rules of cheating or plagiarism so they think that its okay to sneak a peek at the kids paper next to them but what they’re really doing is forming a habit that’s hard to