Pathways to Adolescent Depression in Immigrant Youth: Longitudinal Studies

The main goal is to investigate the role of specific psychosocial profiles underlying depressive disorders in adolescence, and ethnic group variation in the distribution of adolescents among the identified profiles. The subgoals are 1)Examine 3 hypothesi zed and other unanticipated psychosocial profiles across ethnic groups 2)Follow depressed pre-adolescents expressing these profiles to trace antecedent psychosocial dimensions for the subsequent emergence of subthreshold and explicit adolescent depression 3)Track the clinical and developmental course of the depressed children 4)Investigate prevalence of psychiatric disorders, and examine the distribution of manifest symptoms associated with diagnoses of depressive disorders and subthreshold symptom patter ns across the predicted profile groups, including comorbid symptom patterns. Included in the proposal is a PhD project focusing on subgoal 4. The study is motivated by the lack of knowledge of how immigration affect mechanisms behind adolescent onset depr ession disorders. We track immigrant children from Turkey and Sri Lanka, ethnic Norwegians and unaccompanied underage refugees from 10 years through 18. Psychosocial profiles are identified by questionnaire data. A screened depressive group and non-depres sive controls will be clinically assessed for depressive disorders. Based on annual follow-ups we examine the clinical and developmental course of potential at risk, depressed and non-depressed pre- and adolelescents. We expect to gain new knowledge relev ant to developmental psychopathology theory, cross-cultural perspectives, and impacts of new contextual stressors (e.g., immigration). This can be clinically beneficial, leading to more effective prevention and treatment interventions, guided by more prec ise grasp of conditions underlying the adolescent depression. Our project represents a first step in delineating individual and contextual factors associated with the onset and course of adolescent depressio