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

Chapter V: Discussion
sectional study, the connections can be made to grade but not to development. A longitudinal
study may be important in differentiating the relationships of cognitive, emotional, and social
development to adolescents' conceptions and self-recognition of depression, as well as their
coping styles when depressed.
Implications and Considerations for Research, Policy, and Practice
The findings of this study can have direct implications for research, policy, and practice
strategies aimed to better communicate and help young people with and without depression.
The present research advances our knowledge in adolescents' conceptions of depression,
self-recognition of depression, pathways to talking to someone when feeling depressed, and in
the contributions of social and emotional understanding to depressive symptomatology. The
results indicate that adolescents clarify, provide depth to, and extend our understanding of
depression. Moreover, depressive symptomatology is closely connected with adolescents' self-
recognition of depression, however self-recognition of depression extends beyond the boundaries
of screened "Depression." The majority of adolescents who self-recognized depression in their
lifetime, thought that they needed to talk to someone when depressed and actually did talk to
someone. However, also when it comes to talking to someone, it is those young people screened
as "Not Depressed" who are more likely to talk to someone. Finally, Poor Emotion Awareness,
reluctance to express emotion, gender, and decreasing levels of coping strategies with sadness,
are important contributors to severity of depressive symptomatology. Depression may be a
common pathway for a variety of other problems that can overlap with it, hence intervention at
all the three dimensions may extend across the boundaries of depression in helping these young
people. In this section, these implications and considerations are discussed under their respective
headings.
Research
As discussed previously, adolescent depression is a complex mental health problem
offering diverse challenges in its modes of presentation and intervention, and posing societal
concern and research needs. The findings of this study beg for further investigations to build
upon its framework. Future research should continue to differentiate and examine adolescents'
understanding and conceptions of depression, linked with their cognitive, and social and
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