Depression and suicidality in the adolescents in Osijek, Croatia

Mood disorders in children and adolescents and their treatments have received increasing attention and clinical investigation over the last few decades. The core features of mood disorders are essentially the same across the life span. Developmental level, however, appears to influence the expression of certain mood symptoms with greater frequency than other within the framework of depressive disorders. Suicide is the fourth leading cause of death in children between the ages of 10 and 15 years and the third leading cause of death among the adolescents and young adults 15-25 years. In this article the authors presents cross-sectional study done on the sample of 286 adolescents. Adolescents fulfilled self-rating scale Beck Depression Inventory for the screening of the depression and suicidality. In our sample 3.85% of the adolescents fulfilled the criteria for severe depressive episode and the 5.94% of the adolescents fulfilled criteria for moderate depressive episode. Also on the item of suicidality (Item 9) 0.7 % of the adolescents had very high score, while 8.4 had significant score for the suicidal risk. Our results are in concordance with similar epidemiological studies done world while.