<p>From a JAMA study as reported by Time magazine:</p>
<p>By CLAUDIA WALLIS Thu Jun 4, 1:15 pm ET</p>
<p>Depression is one of the dark demons of adolescence. Up to 1 in 12 American teenagers is affected, according to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), and three times as many will experience depression at some point by age 18. Studies show that at least 20% of teenagers with clinical depression will go on to develop chronic cases that will haunt them throughout adulthood. That is, if they reach adulthood. Suicide is a significant risk for depressed adolescents and the third leading cause of deaths among U.S. teenagers.</p>
<p>It’s no wonder, then, that researchers are beginning to focus on preventing teenage depression in the first place. A new study in the current issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) is the largest to date showing that a relatively modest intervention goes a long way to prevent episodes of depression in high-risk teens. The authors hope it will provide a model that could be used widely in schools to protect kids from depression. (See pictures of teenagers in America.)</p>
<p>The study involved 316 adolescents, ages 13 to 17, in four cities. All of the teenagers had a history of depression or current symptoms that just fell short of a clinical diagnosis. The teens also had at least one parent who had been diagnosed with depression.</p>
<p>Half the teenagers were randomly assigned to a prevention program that consisted of eight weekly group sessions of cognitive behavioral instruction (CB) lasting 90 minutes each, plus six follow-up sessions that met once a month. The other half of the volunteers were assigned to a control group that got “usual care,” meaning they were free to seek help from whatever resources were available to them in their community - as were the teens in the experimental group. There were no differences between the groups in terms of the types of services they chose on their own. (Read “Talk Therapy for Kids: Better Than Pills?”)</p>
<p>The teenagers were followed for nine months. Less than a quarter (21.4%) of those in the CB program went on to have an episode of depression, compared with about a third (32.7%) of those in the control group. The results were far more dramatic for teens whose parents were not actively suffering from depression: only 11.7% who went through the program had an episode of depression during the nine-month follow-up.</p>
<p>[Print</a> Story: Study: Early Therapy Can Save Teens from Depression - Yahoo! News](<a href=“http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20090604/hl_time/08599190250000/print]Print”>http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20090604/hl_time/08599190250000/print)</p>