Short-term stability of depressive symptoms and suicide attempts in Swedish adolescents

The prevalence of depressive symptoms, suicidal ideation and their relationship to perceived health problems and social relations were examined in a sample of 605 Swedish adolescents aged 13-18 years. Short-term stability of depressive symptoms and the turnover rate from a nondepressed to a depressed state were examined for subsamples of 36 depressed and 71 nondepressed subjects, respectively, who were retested after 4 to 6 weeks. Using Beck's criteria for clinical depression, 9% of the adolescents experienced moderate to severe depressive symptom levels. However, a more conservative estimate, 4%, was obtained when DSM-III criteria for major depressive disorder were applied. Approximately 3% of the adolescents had pronounced suicidal ideation and had made at least one previous suicide attempt. There was a tendency for boys to show more stable depressive symptoms and suicidal ideation than girls. Furthermore, a set of 5 psychosocial variables concerning the students' satisfaction with their school and leisure time, conflictual level at home and number of close friends predicted 31% of the variance of the subjects' total depressive symptom scores. Although a 32% decrease of depressive symptoms was noted for the depressed subsample of adolescents, 44% of these subjects continued to experience moderate to severe depression at follow-up.