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Adolescent Depression Often Continues To Adulthood CHICAGO, IL -- May 11, 1999 -- Many depressed teenagers grow up to become depressed adults, with a significantly higher rate of suicide and suicide attempts, according to an article in tomorrow’s issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association. Myrna Weissman, Ph.D., of the New York State Psychiatric Institute and Columbia University in New York, and colleagues followed two groups of young people into adulthood. All were under 18 when they were initially selected for the study in the early 1980s. Ninety-one study participants were diagnosed with major depressive disorder (MDD) during adolescence; 73 of them were assessed in the follow-up. There also were 37 healthy adolescent subjects recruited from the community through newspaper advertising and word-of-mouth who were assessed in follow-up. The teenagers in the control group had no evidence of past or current psychiatric disorders. An independent team of psychiatrists and psychologists without knowledge of the initial diagnosis conducted a follow-up 10 to 15 years later. The researchers found there was a high rate of suicide and suicide attempts among those who experienced depression as teenagers. Seven suicides (7.7 percent) occurred in the adolescent-onset depressed subjects and more than half (50.6 percent) of the adolescent-onset MDD subjects made a suicide attempt over their lifetime -- 22 percent had made multiple attempts. Compared to the control subjects, those who were depressed as adolescents had more than a five-fold increased risk for a first suicide attempt in the follow-up period and a 14-fold increased risk over their lifetime. The depressed adolescents were at high risk (two-fold) to experience more depression as adults. "After age 18 years until the end of the observation period, only 37 percent of the adolescent-onset MDD subjects survived without an episode of MDD, whereas 69 percent of the control subjects survived without an episode in the same period," the authors write. Among other findings of the study: -- Those who were depressed as teenagers had more psychiatric and medical hospitalisations than the control subjects during the follow-up. -- The adolescent-onset MDD subjects reported significantly more impairment in work, family and social life. -- The depressed group had lower educational achievement, lower social class and more time out of work due to psychopathology. The authors added that new and effective treatments for depression were not available in the early 1980s, when the study began. Because depression was seen largely as a disorder of middle-aged and elderly people, adolescents were excluded from studies of drugs to treat depression. The United States Food and Drug Administration has recently required that adolescents be included in these clinical trials. "Since treatments are now available, our findings argue for the early identification of depressed adolescents by physicians in primary care, pediatric, obstetrics and gynecology and school-based or mental health clinics," the authors conclude. "Any debate about whether society can afford the cost of their psychiatric treatment or the cost of the research to develop the evidence needs to take the consequences of adolescent MDD into consideration." E-mail this page to a friend or colleague! To print, use this version