Depression in African-American Adolescents

Etiology of Depression

Mental illnesses like depression can be very difficult to diagnose or to recognize: There is no serum to test for when looking for depression. In some real if rather vague way, mental health is simply the absence of mental disorders. And in the reverse we define mental illness as the absence of mental health. The circularity of this definition is certainly confusing, but it reflects the real confusion over the range of what may be considered to be mentally "normal." This vagueness as to definition does not mean that the problem of mental illness and especially depression is not real: Indeed, the difficulty of identifying those with mental illness and so of providing prompt and appropriate treatment to them makes the need to do so more effectively all the more important (Grob, 1991, p. 13). The need to identify mental illness in -...
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