Abstract
Objective: The aim of this study was to explore the life stories of depressive adolescents and compare them with non-clinical adolescents’ life stories. Methods: For this purpose, we compared 20 life stories of hospitalized adolescents suffering from major depressive episode with 40 life stories of adolescents attending school divided into two groups: 20 non-depressed and 20 depressed adolescents. Results: Results showed that life stories differed as a function of psychopathology. Depressed hospitalized adolescents spoke about their disease and defined themselves by their depression. The depressed adolescents in school concentrated on schooling and school achievements, while the non-depressed group defined themselves by their family, friends and inclusion in a peer group. Conclusion: These analyses allowed us to highlight specific themes mentioned by each of the three groups of adolescents. Although life stories are personal and unique, analysis of such stories allows us to better understand the daily reality of depressive adolescents and the relationships between the life events they experience, daily stressors, depression and how they construct their personal history.
Highlights
Depression is one of the most common psychopathologies in adolescence
Group 3 was composed of 20 adolescent inpatients in a child psychiatry unit for whom a diagnosis of major depressive episode had been made by a child psychiatrist
Our first analyses showed that hospitalized adolescents talked less and used significantly fewer different words
Summary
The specific symptom of depressive mood is present in 30% to 40% of adolescents in regular school settings (Boulard et al, 2012). These results support Twenge and Nolen-Hoeksema’s (2002) finding that adolescence is a sensitive period for the development of depression. According to Ustun et al (2004), two-thirds of adolescents do not receive medical and/ or psychological treatment This lack of treatment can be explained by deficiencies in primary care (e.g., lack of knowledge regarding the identification and treatment of depression leading to under-diagnosis, underestimation of the level of severity of the disorder, etc.) especially during adolescence when the symptoms of depression overlap with the “unhappiness” characteristic of this
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