Mental Illness In Adolescents

1 Pages 353 Words

In this essay, I will explore areas of adolescent depression including contributing factors and treatments. I feel that this is an important area of study because suicide rates are higher among adolescents. If more emphasis is placed upon the study of the factors and treatments of adolescent depression, many lives could be saved.

Emotional Resilience: Risk and Protective Factors for Depression Among Alternative Education Students in New Zealand.
This Empirical Study focuses on the contributing factors and influences on incidences of depression among alternative education students and seeks to explain why some students with high risk factors do not develop depressive disorders while others do. Until this article, research focusing on contributing factors of mood disorders have not pinpointed factors which specifically cause these disorders. This article seeks to further examine those rare instances where the student perseveres against the odds and does not develop a mood disorder by building on previous research which have identified protective factors which promote these favorable outcomes. By identifying both the risk factors and protective factors, strategies can be created to improve mental health outcomes.
Methods and Results: For this study, a sample of students was gathered from alternative education high schools in the northern region of North Island in New Zealand which combines rural and urban populations. The students in alternative education programs may have behavioral problems, repeat expulsions, pregnancy or childcare issues which prevent them from attending mainstream high schools. Each student in the study was issued a survey which was pre-tested on a sample of diverse students and amended prior to its use in this study. Student surveys were excluded if the students had answered too few questions or had been inconsistent in their answers.
Findings:
Alternative education students reported high levels of po...