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Adolescent Depression from a Developmental Perspective: The Importance of Recognizing Developmental Distress in
Christopher Rikard-Bell1, Caroline Hunt1, Claire McAulay1
1School of Psychology, Faculty of Science, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia.
Objective:
To make the case that developmental distress needs to be assessed when evaluating adolescent depression.
Methods:
Reviews of relevant papers relating to adolescent depression.
Results:
Adolescent depression is a common and costly health condition, confounded by a lack of consensus among health professionals regarding evidence-based approaches regarding treatments. Little attention has been paid to the contribution of developmental distress.
Conclusion:
The current adult-like model of adolescent depression fails to advance the understanding of adolescent depression. A systematic evidence-based approach to identifying developmental self-perception distress in depressed adolescents could provide important advances in treatment to improve short-term and longer-term mental health outcomes. This paper proposes the creation of a psychometric tool to systematically measure developmental self-perception distress in adolescents with depression.
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