Depression in Adolescents

Almost 30,000 Americans take their own lives each year. . .This number is greater than the annual number of homicides in the United States. . .About 5,000 suicides occur among young people between the ages of 15 and 24. That means that each day, 13 Americans in this age group kill themselves. Many more young people attempt suicide and fail. (p. 7)

It is statistics such as the foregoing that lead authors such as Harris and Ammerman (1986) to refer to adolescent depression as one of the most serious mental health concerns facing the nation. According to these authors, depression in children and adolescents is often related to academic and social problems.

However, Giffin and Felsenthal (1983) have noted that serious depression in adolescents can have additional causes, such as loss of a parent or good friend, or loss of more internal factors such as self-respect or self-esteem. Regardless of the reasons for the depression, Giffin and Felsenthal point out that it will almost always be accompanied by feelings of failure and a lack of self confidence.

The problem of depression in adolescence evidences a clear need for effective intervention aimed at remediating the condition. According to Eddy, Wolpert and Rosenberg (1989) intervention for depression commonly takes one of six forms:

(1) affective education aimed at helping youth understand and cope with th

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rsonnel (counselors, therapists) will have reviewed all intake records from which the sample will be chosen and verified that the major presenting problem is depression. Also, in order to minimize response variance due to differences in adolescents' therapeutic treatment history, the population from which the sample will be drawn will only include teens who have not been in any form of therapy prior to this group. Session 1: The first session of the group will be based on a set of first-session recommendations for group counseling formulated by Peterson and Nisenholz (1987) who state that relevant objectives of the first meeting of any group must include a specification, for clients, of the overall purpose of the group. The purpose of this group will be said to be that of increasing teens' ability to cope with those stressors producing feelings of depression. At this session, the therapist will focus on establishing rapport with and among group members by encouraging adolescents to acquaint the group with who they are and share some information about their current situation. Also, the first session will be used to collect pretest measures relevant to the evaluation of whether the intervention helped adolescents. Sess
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Approximate Word count = 2558
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)

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