@article{ref1,
title="Short-term stability of depressive symptoms and suicide attempts in Swedish adolescents",
journal="Acta psychiatrica Scandinavica",
year="1991",
author="Larsson, B. and Melin, L. and Breitholtz, E. and Andersson, Gerhard",
volume="83",
number="5",
pages="385-390",
abstract="The prevalence of depressive symptoms, suicidal ideation and their relationship to perceived health problems and social relations were examined in a sample of 605 Swedish adolescents aged 13-18 years. Short-term stability of depressive symptoms and the turnover rate from a nondepressed to a depressed state were examined for subsamples of 36 depressed and 71 nondepressed subjects, respectively, who were retested after 4 to 6 weeks. Using Beck's criteria for clinical depression, 9% of the adolescents experienced moderate to severe depressive symptom levels. However, a more conservative estimate, 4%, was obtained when DSM-III criteria for major depressive disorder were applied. Approximately 3% of the adolescents had pronounced suicidal ideation and had made at least one previous suicide attempt. There was a tendency for boys to show more stable depressive symptoms and suicidal ideation than girls. Furthermore, a set of 5 psychosocial variables concerning the students' satisfaction with their school and leisure time, conflictual level at home and number of close friends predicted 31% of the variance of the subjects' total depressive symptom scores. Although a 32% decrease of depressive symptoms was noted for the depressed subsample of adolescents, 44% of these subjects continued to experience moderate to severe depression at follow-up.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="0001-690X",
doi="",
url="http://dx.doi.org/"
}