Researching Adolescent Depression

Sarah Tallaksen, Verrazano Class of 2018, completed Major in Psychology with a Minor in American Sign Language 

My capstone involved researching adolescent depression. I researched topics that further detailed explanations for depression, successful treatment options, and future prognosis. 
While researching adolescent depression, contributing factors included more than what I originally expected. I learned that depression cannot be explained by one simple factor and is not easily explained by simple cause and effect. Adolescents with depression are not only depressed because they lack social support or familial support. Other important factors include genetics, and certain alleles like the Met allele, can make a person more vulnerable to developing depression. Those with insufficient serotonin genes suffer from depressive symptoms. Chronic stress can cause alterations in an adolescent's brain development, which can negatively affect them for the rest of their lives. Trauma sometimes leaves a lasting impression that psychologically scars a child, which could then lead to depression. Adolescent Depression.
 
I realized my research topic needed to be narrowed down. Many people are aware of adolescent depression and have done their own research on the topic, so the struggle was determining which articles were most relevant to what I wanted to study, and how they would merge to form a coherent essay.

Future research should focus on other biological aspects of depression. During the course of my research I only found two recent articles that confirmed a biological connection to depression. The lack of research is most probably due to the lack of accurate tools to conduct biological testing. Studying genes and alleles is difficult because it requires specific tools and a significant amount of funding. Future research should also look into substance abuse and how it is related to adolescent depression. An obstacle arises when attempting to determine if the substance abuse causes depression, or the depression causes the substance abuse.

After completing this research project, the most important characteristic of depression I discovered is that depression is highly individualized. Each adolescent who experiences depression will experience it a different way. Symptoms may be similar, but influences may be different. One adolescent may be very resilient to trauma and not develop depression later in life and yet a different adolescent may experience something else less traumatic and yet still develop depression. An adolescent may be born with a short variation of allele that interrupts normal brain activity and causes depressive symptoms to arise. Every adolescent diagnosed with depression will share similar symptoms, but not every adolescent will share similar experiences, and that is essential when treating an adolescent with depression.