Age and Clinical Depression: Today's Youth in the Twenty-first Century

Clinical depression is on the increase in adolescence and young adulthood. Since World War II, psychiatrists are seeing depressed patients who are younger, less severly ill, and more commonly neurotic than psychotic. These patients are most often seen in outpatient and ambulatory settings rather than inpatient hospital facilities. Several reasons have been postulated for this increase; (1) the baby boom following World War II increased the number of people in this age group and (2) the sheer number of people created stresses with which conventional social institutions cannot cope. A shrinking economy and other forces blocking economic gain counteract rising expectations of all young adults, and a situation is created that gives rise to loss of self-esteem, frustation, and perhaps a rising incidence of depression. However, this is just one factor of many which interact which might cause depression. A serious question is whether the reactive depressions of youth will pave the way for endogenous depression in adulthood and old age. Research is needed to determine whether youth will be predisposed to further depressive episodes and, if so, will we be entering a new age of melancholy?