Teenage Depression Test

Q: By the time they reach high school, most American students have been screened, probed and protected from a wide range of ailments: amblyopia and hearing problems, scoliosis and tuberculosis, mumps and head lice, flat feet and language delays, measles and myopia. But these programs very rarely screen for one of the most deadly and devastating threats teenagers face: the desire to kill themselves. "We'd like to see screening" for depression and risk of suicide "become more commonplace, a routine part" of high schools' student health programs, says David Shaffer, director of the division of child and adolescent psychiatry at Columbia University in New York. "We want it to become part of the culture."

A:Shaffer is developer of the Columbia TeenScreen Program, a sequence of tests and interviews designed to sift through a large group of teens and identify the few kids at high risk for depression and suicide. Along with the mental health advocacy group Positive Action for Teen Health (PATH), TeenScreen has launched an ambitious plan to screen -- and, as required, direct to treatment -- every teen in America. Each year, around 8 percent of teens report an attempt to commit suicide in the past year, and about 1,600 succeed, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. For ages 10 to 24, suicide is the third-leading cause of death, following auto accidents and homicides. TeenScreen's approach to the problem is different from most other suicide prevention techniques in that it does not seek to educate, destigmatize or provide hot lines for troubled kids, arguing that these methods have been proven ineffective or even harmful. TeenScreen seeks only to identify the youth at highest risk and get them the treatment they need, leaving the others as undisturbed as possible. While the screen-and-treat approach is gaining support and momentum in the field, it remains controversial. John Kalafat, a professor of psychology at Rutgers University and president of the American Association of Suicidology, has researched in-school educational and awareness programs and determined that many of them do indeed succeed in getting at-risk teens counseling or medical care. And he sees shortcomings in screening programs, including the fact that exams' need to be conducted regularly to be fully effective and a research record not significantly better than other programs'. TeenScreen "is a good program," Kalafat says, "but why present it as, 'We do this because the others aren't good'?" Laurie Flynn, PATH's national director and former executive director of NAMI, a national mental health advocacy group, is well aware of how devastating teen depression can be for families. Her teenage daughter attempted suicide 16 years ago but was able to get help and is okay today, she says. "Since we know we can identify [kids at risk for suicide] and we know we can help, how can we turn away from this?" she asks. "We're talking about saving lives here. And reducing disability. And reducing suffering." An Illness, Not a Gesture As part of its campaign to spread the screening program nationally, Columbia and PATH conducted a survey on teen depression and suicide in December of parents in Washington, New York, Florida and Ohio. A large majority of parents, the survey found, thought other parents would miss the warning signs -- but that they themselves would be able to see them. Nearly nine out of 10 thought themselves able to do so. This conflicts sharply with Shaffer's research into completed suicides. After conducting investigations into 120 teenage suicides over a two-year period, he and his colleagues discovered that 90 percent had a diagnosable mental disorder that had gone undetected. More than half had significant symptoms for more than two years. This does not necessarily mean the parents were inattentive; it's partly the nature of the teenage beast.

Teenage Depression Test

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