Date: 4/28/2011 8:00 AM
Media Contact: SAMHSA Press Office
Telephone: 240-276-2130
A new national report released in conjunction with Mental Health Awareness Month and Children’s Mental Health Awareness Day indicates that 8.1 percent of America’s adolescents aged 12 to 17 (2 million youth) experienced at least one major depressive episode (MDE) in the past year. The report by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) also shows that only 34.7 percent of these adolescents suffering from major depressive episodes received treatment during this period.
An MDE is defined as a period of two weeks or longer during which there is either depressed mood or loss of interest or pleasure and at least four other symptoms that reflect a change in functioning, including problems with sleep, eating, energy, concentration, and self-image.
"Depression among adolescents is a serious public health problem that is all too often overlooked and the consequences can be devastating," said SAMHSA Administrator, Pamela S. Hyde, J.D. "If depression among young people is identified and treated early we can turn a life around and reduce the impact of mental illness and substance abuse on America’s communities."
One of the study’s most notable findings was that adolescents who had suffered from an MDE in the past year were more than three times as likely as those without a past year MDE to have had a substance use disorder in the past year (18.9 percent versus 6 percent).
The study also found significant differences in the rates of past year MDE experiences among subgroups of adolescents. For example, adolescent females were twice as likely as their male counterparts to have experienced a past year MDE (11.7 percent versus 4.7 percent). Rates of past year MDE experience also rose as adolescents grew older with rates increasing from 3.6 percent of adolescents aged 12 to 10.4 percent of adolescents aged 15.
Among the nearly 700,000 adolescents who suffered from MDE and received treatment, more than half (58.5 percent) saw or met with a medical doctor or other health professional only -- without being prescribed medication. The next largest segment of adolescents receiving treatment -- 34.7 percent -- met with a medical doctor or other heath professional and were also prescribed medication. The remaining 6.7 percent receiving treatment used prescription medication only.
May is Mental Health Awareness Month and May 3 is National Children’s Mental Health Awareness Day. Awareness Day is part of SAMHSA’s strategic initiative on public awareness and support, and is a collaboration of more than 100 national organizations and Federal agencies and programs working to provide greater access to community-based mental health services and supports for children and youth with serious mental health conditions and their families. Across the country, more than 1,000 communities will celebrate this annual observance with local events; social media campaigns; dance, music, and visual activities with children to raise awareness about the importance of children’s mental health.
Major Depressive Episode and Treatment among Adolescents: 2009 is drawn from SAMHSA’s 2009 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), which collected data from a representative sample of 22,626 adolescents throughout the United States.
The full report is available on the web at
http://oas.samhsa.gov/2k11/009/AdolescentDepression.cfm
For related publications and information, visit http://www.samhsa.gov/.
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SAMHSA is a public health agency within the Department of Health and Human Services. Its mission is to reduce the impact of substance abuse and mental illness on America’s communities.
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Last updated: 4/28/2011 8:21 AM
Nearly two-thirds of America’s 2 million adolescents suffering from major depressive episodes in the past year did not receive treatment
Anxiety Disorders in Children and Adolescents (Fact Sheet)
A fact sheet that describes the development in our understanding of how anxiety disorders affect children and adolescents and the direction of future research.
Anxiety can be a normal reaction to stress. It can help us deal with a tense situation, study harder for an exam, keep focused on an important speech. In general, it can help us cope. But when anxiety becomes an excessive, irrational dread of everyday situations, it has become a disabling condition. Examples of anxiety disorders are obsessive compulsive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, social phobia, specific phobia, and generalized anxiety disorder. Symptoms of many of these disorders begin in childhood or adolescence.
Yesterday
* The brain areas and circuitries underlying symptoms of anxiety disorders were unknown.
* No targeted psychotherapies for anxiety disorders existed.
* Clinicians did not have strong information to help them make treatment decisions between a specific psychotherapy, medication alone, or a combination of medication and psychotherapy.
Today
* A large, national survey of adolescent mental health reported that about 8 percent of teens ages 13-18 have an anxiety disorder, with symptoms commonly emerging around age 6. However, of these teens, only 18 percent received mental health care.
* Imaging studies show that children with anxiety disorders have atypical activity in specific brain areas, compared with other people. For example:
- In one, very small study, anxious adolescents exposed to an anxiety-provoking situation showed heightened activity in brain structures associated with fear processing and emotion regulation, when compared with normal controls.
- Another small study found that youth with generalized anxiety disorder had unchecked activity in the brain’s fear center, when looking at angry faces so quickly that they are hardly aware of seeing them.
* Brain scans of teens sizing each other up reveal an emotion circuit activating more in girls as they grow older, but not in boys. This finding highlights how emotion circuitry diverges in the male and female brain during a developmental stage in which girls are at increased risk for developing mood and anxiety disorders.
* The Child/Adolescent Anxiety Multimodal Study (CAMS), in addition to other studies on treating childhood anxiety disorders, found that high-quality cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), given with or without medication, can effectively treat anxiety disorders in children. One small study even found that a behavioral therapy designed to treat social phobia in children was more effective than an antidepressant medication.
Tomorrow
* Novel approaches to treatment and prevention that are currently being studied in adults with anxiety disorders may someday lead to advances in treatment for children. Examples of such approaches include:
- Identifying predictive markers, such as hormone levels and genes, for determining people at risk for developing PTSD after a traumatic event.
- Developing Internet-based cognitive and behavioral therapies to make interventions more widely available.
* Imaging, molecular biology, and genetics research are pointing the way to brain mechanisms involved in anxiety disorders. Features of these mechanisms are potential biomarkers that could identify people at risk—a key to early intervention—or help clinicians to determine which treatments are likely to work for different patients.
* Research to identify brain mechanisms involved in anxiety disorders also holds the potential to reveal targets for better medications with fewer side effects.
NIMH · Anxiety Disorders in Children and Adolescents (Fact Sheet)
NIMH · Anxiety Disorders in Children and Adolescents (Fact Sheet)
A fact sheet that describes the past, present and future of research on brain development.
In recent years, powerful new imaging technologies and other approaches have allowed scientists to track the development of the brain during childhood. These studies offer a way to understand how the intellectual abilities and behavioral maturity of children at various ages are rooted in the developing brain. Studies of the developing brain also offer the best possibility for understanding the origins of mental illnesses. Research suggests that vulnerability to mental illness—and resilience—is rooted in development. Both risk and resilience are shaped by genes and environment interacting together, through childhood and adolescence. Research can show how.
Yesterday
* Thirty years ago, it was thought that children did not experience mood disorders like depression.
* In the 1980s and 1990s, national surveys revealed that many adults with mental illness recall having had their first symptoms in youth. Subsequent work confirmed that early signs of psychiatric disorders are often present years before a diagnosis is made.
* Studies tracking the maturation of the brain showed that different parts of the brain grow at different times. There are growth spurts as well as periods of more gradual growth. Imaging studies have also shown that youth diagnosed with mental disorders show patterns of development different than in unaffected youth.
* Research in animals has shown that early experience, including the quality of early parental nurturing, has measurable effects on the brain and later behavior. Early experiences shape how the brain-based stress response system develops and can influence later stress resilience.
Today
- Scientists are continually refining imaging techniques to provide more detailed information on brain development, even in very young children.
Researchers are tracing how changes in the developing brain underlie milestones in a child’s mental and physical abilities, and behavior.
- Scientists are conducting studies to determine what individual genes do in the brain and how changes in genes disrupt brain function. Already this work has led to the identification of candidate compounds to correct deficits associated with neurodevelopmental disorders like Fragile X syndrome; clinical trials are underway.
- Research on early childhood stress is showing how early trauma can alter the brain’s stress response system and contribute to future risk of anxiety and mood disorders.
- Scientists are also studying how genes that convey vulnerability to stress may increase risk.
- Studies of how the environment can turn genes on and off—a field called epigenetics—are providing clues to how early experience can have lasting effects on behavior, even across generations. Epigenetic changes are likely to be involved in the effects of the environment on development of the nervous system. Knowledge of epigenetic processes may offer targets for the development of new medications.
Tomorrow
. Ongoing research will clarify the relationship between genes and risk for mental illness. Rather than finding genes that cause a particular disorder—for example, a gene for bipolar disorder—it is more likely that genes will be identified that contribute to behavioral, emotional, and social tendencies, including responses to stress. The mosaic of these traits will contribute to vulnerability or resilience to illness.
.. Scientists are increasingly focusing on neural circuits in the brain and how they develop during childhood. Research will map neural circuits in the brain, clarify how genes and environmental factors shape them, and determine how they become disrupted in mental illness.
... One of the major goals of research is to identify biomarkers of disease to enable early and accurate diagnosis of mental illness. In diseases like schizophrenia, for example, early identification of risk may make it possible to intervene early and prevent the lasting disability associated with this disease. The genetics of mental illness is complex; still, knowledge of how genes shape brain function should make it possible to determine whether particular genes increase or protect against risk.
Research also suggests that genes may help determine how a person will respond to treatment.
.... Research on the effects of early stress on the brain will help inform efforts to support the healthy emotional and intellectual development of children.
NIMH · Brain Development During Childhood and Adolescence (Fact Sheet)
NIMH · Brain Development During Childhood and Adolescence (Fact Sheet)
NIMH · Teen Brain Less Discerning of Threat vs. Safety, More Vulnerable to Stress
full-text:
NIMH · Teen Brain Less Discerning of Threat vs. Safety, More Vulnerable to Stress
NIMH · Depression in Children and Adolescents (Fact Sheet)
full-text:
NIMH · Depression in Children and Adolescents (Fact Sheet)
NIMH · Bipolar Disorder in Children and Adolescents (Fact Sheet)
full-text:
NIMH · Bipolar Disorder in Children and Adolescents (Fact Sheet)
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