A Quality Improvement Project That Implements Universal Adolescent Depression Screening Essay

In the United States, suicide is the third-leading cause of death for 10 to 14-year-olds (CDC, 2015) and for 15 to 19-year-olds (Friedman, 2008). In 2013, 17.0% of students grades 9 to 12 in the United States seriously thought about committing suicide; 13.6% made a suicide plan; 8.0% attempted suicide; and 2.7% attempted suicide in which required medical attention (CDC, 2015). These alarming statistics show that there is something wrong with the way suicide is handled in today’s society. In order to alleviate the devastating consequences of teenage suicide, it is important to get at the root of what causes it all: mental illness. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Protection (2013), mental illness is the imbalance of thinking, state of mind, and mood. Approximately 90% of all suicides are committed by people with mental illnesses (NAMI, n.d.). This shows that there is a correlation between mental illness and suicide. If mental illnesses are not treated, deadly consequences could occur. It would make sense that if there is a correlation between mental illness and suicide across all ages, the same should be thought for adolescents. Approximately 21% of all teenagers have a treatable mental illness (Friedman, 2008), although 60% do not receive the help that they need (Horowitz, Ballard, & Pao, 2009). If mental illnesses are not found and treated in teenagers, some of them may pay the ultimate price.

In the United States, suicide is the third leading cause of death for 10 to 14-year-olds (CDC, 2015) and for 15 to 19-year-olds (Friedman, 2008). In 2013, 17.0% of students grades 9 to 12 in the United States seriously thought about committing suicide, 13.6% made a suicide plan, 8.0% attempted suicide, and 2.7% attempted suicide in which required medical attention (CDC, 2015). These alarming statistics show that there is something wrong with the way mental illness is handled in today’s society. Also, approximately 21% of all teenagers have a treatable mental illness (Friedman, 2008), although 60% do not receive the help that they need (Horowitz, Ballard, & Pao, 2009).

According to Fowler, Crosby, Parks, and Ivey (2013), suicide and nonfatal suicidal ideations are significant public health concerns for adolescents and young adults. While the onset of suicidal behaviors is observed as young as six years of age, rates of death and nonfatal injury resulting from suicidal behavior are moderately low until 15 years of age (Fowler et al., 2013). According to Fowler et al (2013), the most current available statistics in the United States (U. S.) reported suicide as the third leading cause of death among youth aged 10-14 and 15-19 years, and it was the second leading cause of death among persons aged 20-24 years.

Mental illnesses are very common in the United States, with one in five of adolescents having a diagnosed mental illness and in the last year less than half of these adolescents have received proper treatment. The most common mental disorders, anxiety and depression, can disrupt daily life and result in suicide, which is the third most frequent cause of death in teenagers (“The Office of Adolescent Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services”). Ten percent of adolescents did not have health insurance in 2013 and those who did, had a very limited amount of mental health care services provided to them (“The Office of Adolescent Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services”). It has been proved that it is even less likely that adolescents who are poor, homeless, gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender will receive the care that is necessary for their health and even life (“The Office of Adolescent Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services”). Mental disorders are not only an

The topic of this study is to determine if evidence based guidelines for youth with depression or mental health concerns needs to be implemented or changed. This study is important because it can show where the health care providers need to improve and where the guidelines are outdated and need to be changed. The hypothesis being tested is that the guidelines are outdated and need to be replaced, and the guidelines need to be implemented and enforced.

The retrospective review conducted by Sun, Abraham, Slack, and Skrepnek (2014) was intended to calculate the national estimates of depression-related emergency department (ED) visits among adolescents that were 17 years or younger in the United States. Depression in adolescents are commonly either not diagnosed, under diagnosed, or unscreened during regular health care office checkups, therefore the ED ends up being their primary care resource in times of need. If depression is left untreated, it may damage the development of a young person’s emotional, cognitive, and social skills placing them at a higher risk for committing self-harm and even suicide (Sun et al., 2014). For the research design, the authors utilized a “retrospective cross-sectional

In “Should All Teens Be Screened for Depression?”, Dr. Chung and Dr. Frances give their opinions on early diagnoses on teenagers, be them supporting the concern, or disagreeing. Chung explains how screening for depression at an earlier time is crucial for effective treatment. Chung also describes the statistics of how 1 in 12 teenagers between ages 12 to 17 are affected with the mental illness, but only less than half are properly diagnosed. He justifies that it is up to clinicians to hold these critical conversations about this mental ailment. However, Allen Frances argues that a diagnosis for depression is too risky. Frances contends that misdiagnoses are all too common, and happen way too often. He clearly indicates

The article puts an emphasis that rooting out depression in adolescence needs to be more proactive in primary healthcare settings. This is done by not only giving physicians the option to diagnose mental illnesses, but by already instilling it in common check-ups (Healy, 2016). Moreover, Healy (2016) points out that many primary healthcare physicians do not have the proper training to screen and treat their patients for depressive symptoms and other mental disorders. Research shows that when physicians are trained and provided with proper screening processes to diagnose and treat depressive symptoms, there were significant increases in the diagnosis of adolescent depression rates (Fallucco, Bejarano & Kozikowski, 2015). This research supports Healy’s notion that the practice of routinely screening adolescents for symptoms in primary healthcare settings are effective in identifying depression in

Both the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) (2016) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) (2014) recommend depression screening of all adolescent patients 12 to 18 years of age. As Zenlea, Milliren, Mednick, & Rhodes (2014) made evident, this is not the case in most office-based practices in the United States. Although this study took place prior to the release of current recommendations, the last recommendations in 2009 by the USPSTF was to screen all of those at risk, as long as there were systems in place to help those at risk. Zenlea, Milliren, Mednick, & Rhodes (2014) concluded that adolescent screening for depression across the United States

Many have stated that their children have done well or improved on many things after receiving a screening. Kids and adolescents spend a significant amount of their time in school, yet providing mental health screenings and care is not an overarching requirement for many schools. “We need to think about how to embed mental health services so they become part of the culture in schools,” says study author Dr. Mina Faze, a child psychiatrist at the University of Oxford (Sifferlin, 2014). To spot physical and mental issues schools should have counsellors at the school to solve a student’s problem right away, after completed the screening. Considering the fact that the screening takes five minutes talking to a counselor should take more than five minutes and the counselor should alert the parent of any serious symptoms that can lead to Major depression. Major depression screening for teens. This is a questionnaire about depression and its warning signs. Questioned are Kids 12 through 18. Major depression is linked with suicide Each year roughly one in 10 teens ages 15 to 19 attempt suicide at least once, with more than 600,000 injuring themselves badly after their attempts to require medical attention, substance abuse, and many other problems. "There are people who say, 'Suicide is rare, so why devote such energy to it?' And they're right," Shaffer comments. "The rationale for going ahead is that the disorders predisposing to suicide are

Previous semester the concentrated population for my research was the adolescent age group ranging from 12- 16 years old. The research investigated self- harm in the age group within the last ten years in America. The exploration question was stated as, “What interventions have the best effects on reducing self-harm/suicide rates in adolescents that have a history of depression symptoms in the last 10 years in America?” It’s important to address this concern because self-harm is serious and can lead to suicide. Overtime this type of behavior has expanded and is continuing to cultivate among adolescents.

Adolescent suicide is an increasing mental health concern. Adolescents are considered a high-risk group in view of the fact that suicide is the third leading cause of death among the ages ten to fourteen and the second leading cause of death among ages fifteen to thirty-five (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2013). Alarming statistics such as these have bought enough attention to add “Adolescent Health” as a new topic in Healthy People 2020

People used to believe that children had no reason to be depressed it wasn’t till a few years ago: “No one thought that children could suffer from real depression; there wasn’t even an official diagnosis for childhood depression until 1980” (Fassler 4). But really who would have thought that such a thing could be possible. Sadly today we know that it’s a real disease and it affects more adolescents than we think: “ The National Institute of Mental Health estimates that as many as 2.5 percent of all American youngsters under the age of eighteen or over 1.5 million children and adolescents are seriously depressed” (Fassler 2).

Only in the past two decades has depression in adolescents been taken seriously. Depression is an illness that involves the body, mood and thoughts. It affects the way a person eats and sleeps, the way one feels about oneself, and the way one thinks about things. Therefore it comes to no surprise to discover that adolescent depression is strongly linked to teen suicide. Adolescent suicide is now responsible for more deaths in youths aged 15 to 19 than cardiovascular disease or cancer (Blackman, 1995). Despite this alarming increased suicide rate, depression in this age group is greatly under diagnosed and can lead to serious difficulties in

Introduction Youth suicide is a major public health problem in the United States today. Each year in the U.S., thousands of teenagers commit suicide. Suicide is the third leading cause of death for 15-24 year olds, and the fifth leading cause of death for 5-14 year olds. (American Foundation of Suicide Prevention [AFSP], 2010; National Center for Health Statistics [NCHS],2006) The reduction of adolescent suicide is one of the major objectives of the Healthy People 2010 Initiative (Department of Health and Human Services, 2010). Scope