Research Assessment #7

Date: November 18, 2016

Subject: Depression Rates Rising
MLA Citation: "Pediatrics.aappublications.org." N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Nov. 2016.
Assessment: In this article, it outlines a new study that has been done about the
incidence of depression in adolescents. The study has concluded that between the year
2005 and the year 2014, the prevalence of depression in children has increased from
8.7% to 11.3%. This article is extremely concerning to me because I personally consider
depression an extremely serious illness. It has directly impacted me personally, so the
fact that the incidence of it is spreading exponentially over time is very concerning.
I have learned recently that mental illnesses werent taken very seriously in the
past. People didnt think that they were really diseases, since they didnt exactly exhibit
any physical symptoms. I personally think that this is absolutely ridiculous. Mental
illness can be very serious and they should be treated with extreme care as well. This
article was primarily statistical information about the study. It had information like which
sources provided the information. Like whether or not it was a primary care physician
who reported the data.
Another extremely concerning piece of information from this article was the fact
that it mentioned that suicide is the second leading cause of death in people ages 15-
19. I found this extremely disheartening. Its so sad that kids feel so lost that they resort
to ending their own lives to end the pain. We had recently done a suicide prevention
session for Olweus at our school recently, so this stuff is fresh in my mind. I am really
curious as to how pediatricians actually diagnose depression in their patients. Do they
look for physical symptoms in the patients or do they just ask them questions and see
what their responses are? And what do they do after that? Do they refer them to a
psychiatrist for further treatment or do they prescribe them medicine themselves? I am
really interested in mental health as well as physical health.
I found this article interesting because this study wasnt really an experiment or
anything. It was basically just a compilation of different statistics from questions that had
been asked to different types of doctors who worked at different kinds of practices that
saw different types of patients. As I mentioned before, the article was primarily
comprised of statistics. The article mentions that the reason why this is so concerning is
because they want to prevent the rising suicide rate amongst children these days. Im
glad that schools are utilizing things like Olweus in schools to help fight suicide in
students. This is an avoidable situation. If kids know that they are not alone and that
there are people that care about them that will help them, then they wont decide to take
their life. I am also curious to learn about what kind of drugs doctors prescribe to
patients that they diagnose as being depressed. I am going to be asking my future
mentor questions about mental health and about how they diagnose and treat their
patients that come in with a mental health issue. I think that treating mental conditions is
also extremely difficult because things are very relative when it comes to the human
psyche.