The importance of developmental mechanisms in understanding adolescent depression

Excerpt

The risk for developing depression markedly increases during the second decade of life [1]. Over the past two decades, considerable research has examined the unique characteristics of adolescence that confer risk for depression, spanning neurobiological, genetic, hormonal, behavioral and psychosocial domains. Identifying etiological mechanisms to guide effective prevention and intervention has proved challenging for many reasons, including the necessary reliance on observational rather than experimental studies, the high cost and attrition problems associated with longitudinal investigations and the integration of rapidly emerging fields, often accompanied with highly technical methods, such as genomics and functional neuroimaging. The heterogeneous classification of depression-related disorders, combined with high levels of comorbidity, has presented additional challenges to the study of contributing mechanisms, particularly if depression is a disorder with multiple underlying causes. …