Most Depressed Teens
Never Get Diagnosis, Care
Excerpt By Maggie Fox, Reuters Health

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Nearly all US parents believe they can spot depression in their teenagers, but in fact two-thirds of adolescents are never diagnosed and left at risk of suicide, a survey published on Thursday says.

In the survey of 900 parents of children 18 or younger, 90% said they were confident they could tell if their own child was depressed or suicidal.

But the team at Columbia University in New York, which helped sponsor the survey, said statistics show that only a third of depressed teen-agers are ever diagnosed by a parent, a doctor, teacher or other adult.

Child psychiatrist Dr. David Shaffer said an estimated 4% to 5% of teen-agers are depressed. In the United States that works out to 750,000 adolescents at any one time.

He said 500,000 make a serious attempt at suicide requiring medical attention, and 1,700 succeed every year.

Suicide is the third-leading cause of death among US teen-agers after accidents and murders.

Parents usually do not read the symptoms correctly because they can be subtle, Shaffer said. People with depression "get snappy" and can seem annoyed by anything that is said to them, he told a news conference.

"Parents tend to withdraw from them. Parents wonder why their youngster is so angry all the time," he said. "They can become hostile in return."

And teenagers will go to great lengths to conceal their distress. They will hide in their room and tell parents they are just fine, Shaffer said.

Columbia released a screening test that it will make available free of charge to certain schools. Shaffer said the test, which starts out with a self-administered questionnaire, would take less than an hour to complete.

Backed by a group called Positive Action for Teen Health, Columbia said access to the test was being funded by private donors and not industry.

Researchers told the news conference that teen-agers tend to disclose more in a written, confidential survey than they would in a face-to-face interview, and that using the results from the survey is more accurate than trying to guess that a teen-ager is depressed.

Of 640 teen-agers who took the test, Shaffer said, 148 screened "positive" for depression. Of those who were positive, 40--or 27%--were suicidal. The test missed seven who later were found to be suicidal.

More information is available on the Internet at http:/www.teenscreen.org.

The survey released on Thursday had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points.

Reference Source 89

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