Depression is a very common condition in adolescents, especially in teens who are recently post-pubescent. Teen depression - or adolescent depression - frequently display very similar symptoms to those symptoms experienced by adults who have major depression. However, there are some considerable differences.

What Are Characteristics of Teen Depression?

Instead of feeling emotions of depression directly, teens will commonly experience boredom, apathy, and disinterest in activities that used to be interesting to them. Another mood manifestation among depressed teens is irritability.

Adolescent major depression is a more prominent cognitive disorder, with less outstanding physical symptoms of depression. If physical symptoms do occur, it is considered to be an atypical occurrence.

The more common cognitive symptoms include:

Helplessness
Despair
Thinking about - or attempting - suicide

The diagnosis, prognosis and treatment of teen depression is quite similar to that of adult depression. Therefore, teens who experience depression are prone to chronic depression, and recurrence throughout their lifetimes.

The average span of a major depressive episode in an adolescent ranges from 9 to 12 months; meaning that the depression will effectively impair the teenager for a complete year.

Since adolescence is also a critical time of development academically, socially, and in learning work skills, depressive episodes can be crippling to a teen, and can greatly interfere with the adolescent's development. This can have long-term psychological and lifestyle consequences if it does enough damage.

The effectiveness of antidepressants on teens is backed by limited research data. While tricyclics have been commonly studied, they have not demonstrated any more efficacy than a placebo. However, using tricyclics have been associated with greater rates of adverse events in teens. There have also been rare reports of sudden death that have been associated with tricyclic treatment; this makes tricyclics a less desired option for treatment of depression in teens.

Preliminary tests have shown that selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors may be quite useful for the treatment of adolescent depression.

These types of medication are thought to be the first-line treatment option for adolescents who suffer from major depression.

Due to the potential of negative impact on the development of adolescents, it is extremely important that antidepressants be considered only as one type of treatment for teen depression. However, due to the critical nature of treating this condition, treatment is necessary to ensure normal social and vocational development.