Screening for and Personalizing Prevention of Adolescent Depression

Depression is a prevalent, distressing, often recurrent, disorder. Adolescence represents a vulnerable developmental period when rates of depression surge and many experience their first episode. Some professional agencies now recommend universal screening starting at age 12. This paper advocates for a risk-based approach to screening for adolescent depression that can improve upon current approaches to screening and facilitate more seamless connections to enable personalizing prevention of depression based on risk group classification. Empirical examples are reviewed for screening based on established risk factors that predict later depression. Evidence is provided that risk groups can reliably and validly classify adolescents at risk for future development of depression based on cognitive and interpersonal vulnerabilities. These risk groups inform one approach to personalizing prevention of depression by matching youths' risk to established, evidence-based prevention programs (cognitive or interpersonal). Promising data from a randomized trial suggest that this personalized depression prevention strategy can reduce depression better than a "one size fits all" approach.