THE PUZZLE OF ADOLESCENT DEPRESSION

Abstract

Adolescent depression is common and has long-term adverse effects. Unfortunately evidence-based treatments are hard to access and are only moderately effective (Goodyer et al., 2017). Even when depressed young people are offered treatment they often do not engage. Symptoms of depression such as irritability, anhedonia, low motivation, low self-efficacy and hopelessness present significant barriers to treatment. Unlike the rapid research and clinical developments seen in the treatment of anxiety disorders, there has been relatively little progress in how we understand or treat depression, especially in adolescents. Adolescence is a distinct period of social, emotional, cognitive and neural development. Young people who are vulnerable to depression often lack self-regulation and executive functioning skills and have significant deficits in reward processing. Our research strategy is to focus on understanding the experience and key symptoms of adolescent depression (e.g. negative self evaluation, anhedonia, sleep, cognitive problems). We use a range of research methods including RCTs, longitudinal cohorts, qualitative research, survey research and lab based experiments. I will describe our ongoing research and present some novel research results, which have important implications for how we design mental health services for young people.

Shirley Reynolds is Professor of Evidence Based Psychological Therapies, University of Reading, United Kingdom. Dr. Reynolds is a clinical psychologist and the Director of the Charlie Waller Institute at the same University. She leads a research group focused on adolescent depression and works closely with Berkshire NHS Trust. Most of her research involves developing and testing out new treatments for common mental health problems and adapting treatments for use with children and young people. Her research interests focus around understanding and treating depression and anxiety disorders in children and adolescents. She was founding co-editor of Evidence Based Mental Health and past President of the British Association of Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy (BABCP: 2010-2012). Dr. Reynolds has worked on a number of randomized control trials of psychological and social interventions for anxiety, OCD and depression funded by MRC/ESRC and the NIHR. She is involved in a number of programmes including the MindEd e-learning programme (www.minded.org.uk) and the Child and Young People Increasing Access to Psychological Therapies (CYP IAPT) programme. The results of her research are published in prestigious journals such as Behavioral and Cognitive Psychotherapy, Plos One Medicine, The Lancet Psychiatry, Behaviour Research and Therapy, and the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. Recently, Dr. Reynold has published the results of a pilot study on Brief Behavioral Activation (Brief BA) for adolescent depression. She also studied the relationship between factors such as nutrition and rumination, and depression. Dr. Reynolds is the author of books such as “Teenage Depression – A CBT Guide for Parents: Help your child beat their low mood” (2015) and “Am I Depressed And What Can I Do About It?: A CBT self-help guide for teenagers experiencing low mood and depression” (2015) .

More information at: http://www.reading.ac.uk/psychology/about/staff/s-a-reynolds.aspx