Increasing number of adolescents receive depression diagnosis
September 11, 2019
Science Daily/University of Turku
The proportion of young people in Finland diagnosed with depression in specialised services is increasing, showed a study based on an extensive set of national data. An increasing number of adolescents seek and get help, but the increase in service use burdens specialised services. The study was conducted by the Research Centre for Child Psychiatry at the University of Turku in Finland.
The proportion of individuals who received a diagnosis by the age of 15 in specialised services increased 53% among boys and 65 % among girls born between 1994 and 2000 compared to young people born between 1987 and 1993.
According to the lead author, Dr Svetlana Filatova from the Research Centre for Child Psychiatry, the results do not imply an increase in depression among adolescents.
"The results can most probably be explained by an increase in service use. An increasing number of depressed adolescents get help at an early stage which is positive," says Filatova.
There has been an increase in the use of psychiatric services among adolescents in the past 20 years both in Finland and worldwide.
"The increase in service use can reflect better identification of depression and a more positive attitude to mental health," Filatova continues.
Examining Temporal Changes Identifies Challenges in Healthcare
Knowledge of time trends for depression is important for disease prevention and healthcare planning. However, few studies until now have examined these for the incidence and cumulative incidence of diagnosed depression from childhood to early adulthood.
According to Docent David Gyllenberg from the Research Centre for Child Psychiatry, it is important to monitor changes in the incidence of depression to timely address challenges faced by mental health services.
"The rapid increase in the number of children and adolescents diagnosed with depression poses a burden for specialised mental health services that need to provide evidence-based treatment for a growing patient population," Gyllenberg stresses.
The data consisted of 1,240,062 persons including 37,682 individuals with a depression diagnosis who had visited specialised care at least once. 10% of females and 5% of males who had been followed up to the age of 25 had been diagnosed with depression.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/09/190911112959.htm
Marijuana users who feel low get high
September 15, 2014
Science Daily/Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs
Adolescents and young adults who smoke marijuana frequently may attempt to manage negative moods by using the drug, according to a study in September's Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs.
"Young people who use marijuana frequently experience an increase in negative affect in the 24 hours leading up to a use event, which lends strong support to an affect-regulation model in this population," says the study's lead author Lydia A. Shrier, M.D., M.P.H., of the division of adolescent and young adult medicine at Boston Children's Hospital.
She notes that using marijuana as a coping technique for negative affect may make it harder for people to stop using the drug.
"One of the challenges is that people often may use marijuana to feel better but may feel worse afterward," she says. "Marijuana use can be associated with anxiety and other negative states. People feel bad, they use, and they might momentarily feel better, but then they feel worse. They don't necessarily link feeling bad after using with the use itself, so it can become a vicious circle."
For the study, Shrier and colleagues recruited 40 people, ages 15 to 24, who used marijuana at least twice a week, although their average was 9.7 times per week. They were trained to use a handheld computer that signaled them at a random time within three-hour intervals (four to six times per day) for two weeks. At each signal, participants were asked about their mood, companionship, perceived availability of marijuana, and recent marijuana use. Participants were also asked to report just before and just after any marijuana use. They completed more than 3,600 reports.
The researchers found that negative affect was significantly increased during the 24 hours before marijuana use compared with other periods. However, positive affect did not vary in the period before marijuana use compared with other times.
Also, neither the availability of marijuana nor the presence of friends modified the likelihood that chronic users would use marijuana following a period of negative affect.
The study is unique in that it collected data in real time to assess mood and marijuana use events. The study thus was able to identify mood that was occurring in the 24 hours before marijuana use and compared it with mood at other times, Shrier reports.
"There are a host of limitations with retrospective assessments, such as asking people 'the last time you used marijuana, why did you use it?'" according to Shrier. "We weren't asking people to predict anything or to recall anything -- we were just asking them to give us reports about how they were feeling right now. We were able to put under a microscope the association between those feelings and subsequent marijuana use."
Shrier says it could be beneficial for clinicians and counselors to help their patients identify patterns of negative affect and to implement alternative mood-regulation strategies to replace marijuana use.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/09/140915083853.htm
Pattern of marijuana use during adolescence may impact psychosocial outcomes in adulthood
July 25, 2017
Science Daily/University of Pittsburgh Schools of the Health Sciences
A pattern of escalating marijuana use in adolescents is linked to higher rates of depression and lower educational accomplishments in adulthood.
How an adolescent uses marijuana, in particular a pattern of escalating use, may make an adolescent more prone to higher rates of depression and lower educational accomplishments by the time they reach adulthood. Those findings come from a new study led by researchers from the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and Pitt Department of Psychology published in the journal Addiction.
"We know that cannabis use in adolescence is associated with outcomes like lower educational level, and difficulties with mood and depression, but through this long-term study, we've been able to provide a much deeper insight into this relationship, showing that certain characteristics of use may be more important than others," said Erika Forbes, Ph.D., professor of psychiatry, psychology and pediatrics, and lead author of the study. "The findings highlight that understanding marijuana use across the entire period of adolescence, which we know is an extremely vulnerable developmental phase, may tell us much more about detrimental long-term impacts than knowing about overall or one time use."
Researchers analyzed 158 boys and young men from Pittsburgh who were part of The Pitt Mother & Child Project (PMCP), a long-running longitudinal study of males at high risk for antisocial behavior and other psychopathology based on low income, family size and child gender, led by Daniel Shaw, Ph.D., distinguished professor of psychology at the University of Pittsburgh.
At age 20, the young men self-reported annual cannabis use characteristics for every year since they started use during an interview. Each man's brain was also scanned using fMRI to assess functional connectivity in the brain's reward circuit. The study participants completed questionnaires at ages 20 and 22 that examined psychosocial outcomes measuring depression and educational attainment.
The researchers analyzed frequency of cannabis use from ages 14 to 19 to determine the relationship between use during adolescence and psychosocial outcomes. In an unexpected finding, boys who started occasionally using cannabis around 15 or 16 years old and had a dramatic increase in use by the time they were 19 had the greatest dysfunction in brain reward circuitry, the highest rates of depression and the lowest educational achievements.
"We expected to see that the young men who had a high, consistent level of marijuana use would have differences in brain function. However, it turned out that those who had an increasing pattern of use over their teens had the biggest differences," Forbes added.
"Though the results do not show a direct causal link, it's important to note that even though most people think marijuana isn't harmful, it may have severe consequences for some people's functioning, education and mood," Forbes said. "While that may seem unimportant at age 20, the level of education you receive will likely have a huge effect on your quality of life and socioeconomic status later in adulthood."
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/07/170725083652.htm