Adolescent Depression Screenings: Let's talk about it!

"Screening a child to find out what the root of the problem is can be useful ... In the case of my daughter [Caroline], it helped [that] they found a connection between her focusing problems and the death of her sister." ~~ Mrs. Downing

A look at what happened to the Downing family is a look at both the pros and cons of new government guidelines that recommend broad reaching screening of adolescents for mental health issues:

• In April (2009), The U.S. Preventives Services Task Force, which makes public health recommendations, stated that all adolescents between the ages of 12 years and 18 years should be screened for major depressive disorder. The task force added that screening makes sense only if the screened adolescents have access to the individualized specialized care such as the care Caroline Downing received.
• In March (2009), the Institute of Medicine, an advisor to Congress regarding scientific matters, stated that early screening was essential to reducing the "financial and medical burden of mental disorders" in the U.S.

Ned Calonge is a senior member of the task force and chief medical officer of the Colorado Department of Health and Environment. He commented:

"We wanted to recommend against the idea doctors would do a screen and pull out their prescription pad... The recommendation says you have to do really close clinical monitoring. So don't pull out the prescription pad and write an SSRI prescription; the best treatment is psychotherapy.

Let's talk!

There is hardly a mental health issue that could be more critical than this one. When children or adolescents need help, the quality of that help shapes the rest of their lives and impacts everyone in their lives. There may be many of us here who, as adolescents, could have been helped a great deal by such screenings followed by appropriate treatment.

Certainly, some of us have children this age who may need help. Some of us ARE in the age range discussed here.

Please, click the "Add Comment" link below to tell us what you think and feel about this issue. Great things can come from such a discussion. Please, let's talk!

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Resources:

Vedantam, Shankar. "The Depression Test." The Washington Post. May 26, 2009.

© Teri Robert, 2009.
Last updated May 28, 2009.