Prevention of depression among Icelandic adolescents: A 12-month follow-up

• Published in: Behaviour Research and Therapy
• Main Authors: Arnarson, E O, Craighead, W E
• Other Authors: Landspitali-University Hospital, University of Iceland, Faculty of Medicine, School of Health Sciences, Reykjavik, Iceland.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Science 2011
• Subjects: Depressive Disorder; Adolescent; Iceland; PubMed in process
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2336/124007; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2010.12.008

To access publisher full text version of this article. Please click on the hyperlink in Additional Links field This paper reports the 12-month follow-up results regarding a program designed to prevent the initial episode of depression and/or dysthymia among Icelandic adolescents. This indicated prevention program was implemented in school settings for 14-15 year-old students judged to be "at risk" for depression because of the presence of some depressive symptoms and/or a negative attributional style. We previously reported (Arnarson & Craighead, 2009) that this program, when compared to treatment-as-usual, was effective in preventing the first episode of depression and/or dysthymia at 6-months following completion of the program. Survival analyses of the 12-month follow-up data indicated that the preventive effects were sustained at the end of 1 year following the completion of the prevention program with only 2 of the prevention program participants reporting an initial episode of MDD/DYS versus 13 of the TAU participants (χ(2) = 5.02, p = .025). Using logistic regression, we also found that initial level of depressive symptoms significantly (p = .0330) predicted the first episode of depression and/or dysthymia among TAU subjects. The limitations of the study were noted, and future directions of research regarding prevention of depression were discussed.