Background: Evaluated trajectories of adolescent depression and their correlates in a longitudinal study of a community sample: early onset (by age 15) with major depression (MDE) recurrence between 15 and 20; early onset with no recurrence; later onset of major depression after age 15 with and without recurrence by 20; and never-depressed.…

Background: In recent years, a number of tragedies have been linked to the Goth culture. Most alarming have been the acts of violence, suicide, and self-harm found among teens. Teachers, parents, administrators, and fellow students are at a loss on how to relate to such students. They are unsure what role they might play in addressing some of the…

In his book "The World Is Flat," Friedman (2005) argued that people have under-appreciated the role that humiliation plays in terrorism. If it is true, that humiliation plays a role in terrorism, what role might this under-appreciated emotion play in middle school? If terrorists act, in part, based on humiliation, how do middle school students act…

Daniel Offer's seminal writings in the 1960s led to a realization that normal adolescence was not characterized by turmoil and upheaval, the then prevailing view that derived from studies of clinical samples. In this paper, the research findings that have appeared over the last four decades are reviewed with respect to the overall features of…

It is well known that many suicidal young people avoid asking for help; however, the reasons why are less understood. A sample of 101 American Indians (age 15-21 years) who had thought about or attempted suicide was asked open-ended questions about barriers to seeking formal and informal help while suicidal. The 74 participants who avoided at…

Objectives: To determine whether preadolescent physical abuse raises the risk of adolescent suicidal behavior, to examine potential mediators and moderators of the relationship between preadolescent abuse and adolescent suicidality, and to examine whether distal (preadolescent) risk factors add to proximal (adolescent) factors in predicting…

Background: A conceptual framework about protective factors (models protection, controls protection, support protection) and risk factors (models risk, opportunity risk, vulnerability risk) was employed to articulate the content of five psychosocial contexts of adolescent life--individual, family, peers, school, and neighborhood--in a study of…

Advancements in the delivery of community-based services and tight utilization management of high-cost treatment options result in youths with serious behavior problems receiving intervention in lower levels of care than was true ten or fifteen years ago. This shift in where services tend to be delivered necessitates enhancement of risk assessment…

Objective and Participants: The authors compared the drinking behaviors, motivations, and problems of collegiate bisexual women with those of heterosexual women (N = 2,788; n = 86 bisexual women). Methods: Data came from the 2003 Student Life Survey, a random population-based survey at a large midwestern university. The authors explored the…

A measurement scale should be short and quick to complete if it is to be practically useful. Drawing on data from a community-based survey of 2,178 people in Hong Kong, we compared five short forms (5- to 10-item) and the original version (20-item) of the Center for Epidemiologic Studies-Depression Scale (CES-D; Radloff, 1977) in predicting…

The study of ethnocultural aspects of suicidal behaviour is, at the moment, still a neglected area. The relatively few studies available are mainly on adults; young people usually are not examined separately. The authors reviewed 82 publications on youth suicide that have addressed, to different degrees, the ethnicity/culture of the population…

We examined whether caregivers of bipolar patients reporting current suicidal ideation and/or a history of a suicide attempt reported higher levels of burden and/or poorer health compared to caregivers of patients without these suicidality indices. In a cross-sectional design, caregivers (N = 480) associated with (a) patients with current suicidal…

Interpersonal responses to a depressed person with or without a suicide attempt were examined. It was hypothesized that the depressed person who attempted suicide would receive higher negative attributions and interpersonal rejection, and that attributions would mediate the relationship between exposure to a depressed person and rejection.…

Because high school faculty have infrequently been asked their views about high school suicide, 167 high school teachers from five high schools in four school districts were administered a questionnaire that asked about a variety of issues related to suicide and high school students, including the nature of the problem, risk factors, and…

Objective: To determine whether childhood-onset bipolar disorder (BP) is associated with an increased psychiatric family history compared with adolescent-onset BP. Method: Semistructured psychiatric interviews were conducted for 438 youth with BP spectrum disorders. To evaluate the effects of age at onset and psychiatric family history, the sample…