Insights from Newly Available Data on
Depression-Related Feelings Among Adolescents

As noted in our recent youth suicide data release, boys are four to five times more likely to commit suicide than girls. One factor associated with youth suicide is depression – a measure of which was recently added to kidsdata.org,  as part of its continuing statewide expansion. These data, which measure depression-related feelings, not clinical depression, come from the California Healthy Kids Survey (CHKS), a statewide survey of students that was developed and is administered by WestEd for the California Department of Education. The survey asked students whether they “had felt so sad and hopeless every day for two weeks or more that you stopped doing some usual activities.”

A few highlights:

• According to 2006-2008 data, about more than 1 in 4 California youth in grades 7, 9, and 11 expressed feelings of depression, with girls more likely than boys to report such feelings.
• Students with weak levels of school connectedness were nearly twice as likely as those with strong levels to report feelings of depression.
• Across all racial/ethnic groups, Pacific Islanders and Native American students were most likely to report feelings of depression while other Asian Americans and Caucasians were least likely.

One difference that’s worth noting when comparing depression and suicide data:  Although boys are four to five times more likely to commit suicide, boys’ reported feelings of depression are lower than girls across grades 7, 9, and 11.

What are the implications of this difference?  What is your organization doing to address this?

Tags: New Data, Statewide Expansion

Posted by kidsdata.org

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 6th, 2010 at 3:42 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.