Abstract
Adolescent depressive disorders are an important mental health issue given that at any one time approximately 1 in 20 children and adolescents experience Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) and the prevalence for any depressive disorder in youth is about 4 %. While accurate prevalence rates for depressive disorders are unavailable for African American youth, it is believed to be similar to those of White and Latino youths. This chapter provides a review of the historical literature in this area, describes the current state of the research, and offers recommendations for how the limited evidence for African American youth in this area warrants increased attention. This area of study is particularly important, given the worldwide status of depression as the leading cause of disability and its impact on individual functioning in days lost from work and school, and increased involvement of youth with social service systems.
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Breland-Noble, A.M. (2016). Depressive Disorders. In: Breland-Noble, A., Al-Mateen, C., Singh, N. (eds) Handbook of Mental Health in African American Youth. Springer Series on Child and Family Studies. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25501-9_11
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