how do adolescents define depression? - cIRcle - University of ...

Chapter V: Discussion
depression in connection to pathways to talking to someone at the time of feeling depressed (see
Figure 2), most adolescents who self-recognized depression in their lifetime, thought that they
needed to talk to someone (68%) when they have thought they were so depressed. Further, most
adolescents, when they thought that they needed to talk to someone, talked to someone (79%)
when feeling depressed. Finally, emotion understanding, particularly Poor Emotion Awareness,
reluctance to express emotion, decreasing levels of coping with sadness, and gender are
important factors in predicting the severity of depressive symptomatology.
Elaborations of these findings are presented in the following six sections. The first four
sections are presented in sequence with the four research questions around which this study is
organized: (1) the construction, generation, frequencies, and discussion of the descriptives of the
categories and subcategories generated by adolescents' conceptions of adolescent depression
(COAD); (2) differentiating specific categories and subcategories, generated from adolescents'
COAD in connection with grade, gender, depressive symptomatology, S-ROAD, thinking about
own need to talk to someone, and talking to someone when feeling depressed; (3) distinguishing
the associations of S-ROAD to the presence and non-presence of screened depression, as well as
to thinking about own need to talk and to talking to someone when depressed; and (4) discussing
how Social Perspective Coordination and emotion capacities relate to the severity of depressive
symptomatology. In the fifth section, I discuss the strengths and limitations of this study. In the
sixth section, I consider the implications and importance of the findings to research, policy, and
practice, and offer further considerations and suggestions for future research.
What are Adolescents' Conceptions of Depression?
Construction of Adolescents' COAD
In the present study, the categories and subcategories were developed from participant-
generated COAD using content analysis, and predominantly guided by the DSM-IV-TR (APA,
2000) criteria for depression and infrequently by K-SADS-PL. These developed constructs of
adolescents' COAD clarify, bridge, and extend prior research on adolescent depression in
important ways. The interest centers on the adolescents' COAD to gain greater understanding of
adolescent depression which may be a common path for other problems such as anxiety,
increases in health risks, social and functional problems, and possible suicidality.
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